Photographers all know about polarizing filters. They remove reflections off the surfaces of objects. We use them to see into water or windows that are obscured by those reflections. But anything with an even slightly glossy surface has a layer of reflection on top. So if you have a shiny green plant, it can remove the shiny and reveal a very saturated green underneath. Polarizers also remove a lot of scattered and reflected light from the sky. Which reveals a deep blue color you didn’t even know was there.
Here is a photo I took of my circular polarizer.
And the first thing I noticed when walking outside during the eclipse was the color of everything was more saturated, just like in that circle. Apparently, an eclipse significantly reduces polarized light and I got this creepy feeling because I was only ever used to seeing the world like that through the viewfinder of my camera.
The other thing I noticed was my outdoor lights. I leave them on all the time because I never remember to turn them on at night. And usually the sun will render them barely visible during the day. On a very sunny day they almost look like they are off.
But you can clearly see they are shining and even flaring the camera during the eclipse.
Our eyes adjust to lighting changes very well so it was hard to tell how much dimmer things were, but that is a good indication. I took this photo a few minutes ago and you can see how dim the lights appear after the moon has fucked off.
I did a calculation using the exposure settings between these two photos. The non-eclipse photo has 7 f-stops more light. That is 128 times or 12,700% more light.
A partial Pringle eclipse cut the sun’s light by 99.2% and somehow our eyes adjusted to make it seem like a normal sunny day (with weird ass saturated colors).
Additional Observations
So, I woke up about 4 minutes before the eclipse. I was very unprepared to photograph it in the normal quality you’d expect from a photographer. However, I did capture some interesting details that I thought I’d share beyond the lack of polarized light.
First up… the shadows.
The shadows were very sharp. In photography there is this concept of light going from a spectrum of hard to soft. Hard light has very high contrast and sharp shadows. Soft light is more flattering and diffused with softer shadows.
To get hard light and sharp shadows you need a small “point” light source. A point light can either be very small or it can be very far away or a combination thereof.
In the studio you could use a bare bulb flash to get a point source.
Or you can attach a modifier like a softbox to create a large light source. The bigger, the softer.
The sun is massive, but it is also super duper far away. So it ends up being the smallest point light source available. However, the atmosphere can scatter and diffuse that light, essentially “enlarging” the light source.
To get perfect hard light shadows you need to go to… the moon.
But the eclipse blocked out about 99% of the sun and it reduced the amount of scattered light. And it greatly reduced the size of the light source causing some very defined sharp shadows.
But not *all* of the shadow was sharp. My left shoulder is very defined but my right shoulder is a bit fuzzy.
You can see it on my fingers too.
Sharp on one side, soft on the other.
This is essentially because the sun has been split into two different light sources in two different directions.
In one direction you have a larger light source causing softer shadows.
And in the other direction you have a smaller light source causing sharper shadows.
In photography we have these strip softboxes that we usually place behind a subject to create an edge light.
Only a narrow, small band of light is hitting the body. If we were to use a strip box to light a face, it would be a small light source creating sharp shadows.
But one trick we can do is to turn the strip light horizontal.
Now the light source hitting the face is large as it wraps around the head.
So a long and narrow light source is essentially large and small simultaneously. And depending on the direction the light is coming from it is either hard or soft light.
Destin from Smarter Every Day explained this phenomenon briefly in his eclipse video.
I also think this large and small light source phenomenon affected my lens flares when I photographed the sun.
In this photo it literally looks like I’m getting starburst flares from two light sources.
And in this photo the flares have a sharp bright edge as well as a dimmer more diffused area.
Normally these starburst flares (caused by light leaking through the metal aperture blades in the lens) have more homogenous tines without that feathering effect.
And then I noticed a different kind of flare in my photos—with all the colors of the rainbow.
And each band of color matched the crescent shape of my partial eclipse.
Like a camera obscura, these flares were in reverse orientation to the crescent sun. And while I wasn’t able to get the sun in sharp focus, the purple section of the flare is very defined. I think that represents approximately how much of the sun was covered by the moon at my location—about 130 miles from totality.
I am a student of light. That is essentially what photography is. And I found this to be a fascinating lesson on how bonkers light can be. I was a little bummed I couldn’t road trip to southern Missouri to see totality, but I am grateful to still have a cool eclipse experience.
Well, I am going to do something similar only with photography. This is a photo someone took for an Amazon review of their Clinique products.
Honestly, it is not a terrible photo. They did some staging. They have an interesting background. All of the labels are legible. It is properly exposed. This would be a perfectly acceptable product photo for an Etsy page.
I’ve been taking these advanced photography courses in preparation for whenever I am able to create a new studio in the house. And my teacher is a photography badass. I just watched a 6 hour class on how to recreate a professional Clinique ad. And at first glance it looks deceptively simple. It’s just some skin care products being splashed with a little water.
Which is why I wanted you to see an average person for reference.
This is what Karl Taylor came up with.
And I don’t think I’ve learned so much about photography in one tutorial before.
Product photography is just loads and loads of problem solving. You have to light the chrome caps with a gradient. Which requires giant diffusion scrims.
Those big white panels are literally only there for the two chrome caps.
You need a pure white background, but you can’t let light spill all over the studio, so you put up giant black light blockers.
And you have to add another light just for the orange bottle on the right.
Oh, and if you want the bottles to glow, well, you have to hide a silver reflector behind them.
But you still want the edges of the bottles to be darker so they have some contrast. So you add some black tape to the sides.
And in order for the reflective labels to have bold black lettering, you have to reflect black cards into them.
Ack! Karl’s beautiful bald head is showing up in the chrome caps! He must put on the naughty blanket.
And once you get every aspect of every bottle perfectly lit, you finally get to yeet some water at it all.
I don’t love product photography because I have a weird obsession to help greedy corporations make their wares look more beautiful. I love it because it is a complicated and challenging new puzzle every time. Every product is a different shape and requires a different technique to make it look its best.
I don’t know if I will be able to live up to Karl’s standards.
This is about the level I was at in 2017 before I quit photography.
I have so much more knowledge in my brain now. I’m really hoping I can surpass that.
A few people mentioned they thought those product images were created in photoshop and not actually photographed. CG renders are becoming a bigger aspect of commercial advertising. It can be more versatile. There are a lot more CG artists than high end product photographers. It’s cheaper. A lot of car advertising uses CG.
However, there are some big brands that insist on the real thing. Apple, Clinique, and Rolex, for instance. And there are things that CG is not as good at representing. Organic shapes and textures can be hard to represent photorealistically. So food, clothing, and anything that requires a human in the picture still need photography.
And I’d like to think there is an ineffable aspect photography can sometimes deliver that CG tends to struggle with. In the end, it is usually up to the art direction on whether an image is successful.
Karl actually did a comparison of his photography against CG. Feel free to guess which image is a render and which was photographed. I’m curious to know if you can spot the difference.
This has been generating a lot of interest so I thought I’d post it here as well.
If you are interested in photography and are a beginner, I recommend this free online course.
And if you are at an intermediate to advanced level and want to learn how to sculpt artificial light using flash or strobes, I highly recommend Karl Taylor’s Visual Education platform. Yes, there is a monthly fee, but there are nearly 1000 classes spanning all genres. I think it would surpass just about any university level photography education. Karl personally replies to every comment on the platform and answers any questions you may have.
And once I get my home studio up and running in a few months I plan to restart my own photography education over on my @frogmanslightschool Tumblr.
I’m going to be focusing on photography for non-photographers.
How to use your smartphone or a cheap DSLR to get decent photos of important life events without having to learn every aspect of photography. I want to develop simple recipes for common situations like celebrations, ceremonies, pets, kids, sports, etc. Feel free to follow me there and ask any photography related questions you have. Just know the educational content won’t start for a while.
When I went to take pictures I thought to myself, “I don’t think I’ll need my other lens.”
And I didn’t.
Until I was driving and right in front of me I saw this giant full moon directly above a Waffle House. And I just thought there was something majestic about that so I pulled into an empty parking lot to capture it. But then my lens was not nearly long enough to get the composition I wanted. But, using my motto “get the data you need” I took four pictures and smooshed them together.
So, I ended up getting the shot I envisioned in my head, but I’m definitely not going to leave my other lens at home next time.
Also, the stars are fake. The stars will always be fake. St. Louis has some of the worst light pollution in the country and I would have to drive 2 hours to hecking Mark Twain Forest if I ever want to see stars again.
I feel like I’ve been one-up’d.
No way I can compete with that. But I commend this photographer for a great shot.
I was looking at my photos from the eclipse, came across this one, and I noticed something weird in the street.
When I zoomed in I was very perplexed. I did not remember anything like that in the street today.
I zoomed in closer and saw it had… metallic ends?
And… lettering?
To me it looked a lot like when a generative fill goes wrong in Photoshop.
But this was nothing I added.
It was in the original photo on my phone’s memory.
And then I started up my conspiracy brain. I knew Samsung had been fucking with people’s moon photos and “enhancing” them with other moon photos they used to train their photo app.
And in response a high level exec said this shit…
I started googling to see if Samsung had started adding A.I. crap into photos automatically. I looked at my settings to make sure I didn’t have some feature enabled.
Finally I was going to walk down to the street with my flashlight and double check to see if there wasn’t something I missed. This was really driving me crazy. THE IMPLICATIONS!
And just before I walked out the door, I noticed something…
You see, eclipses are super bright and it’s a really good idea to bring along…
Silly me. I would have said GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL.
Had no idea the power of onion feet.
The Power of Onion Feet Part II
I’m pretty sure if he takes this advice he will have one less foot to wrap in onions.
I looked up the origin of this and it dates back to around the middle ages.
I just can’t imagine someone saying, “Here is a medieval onion cure to try” and being like, “that sounds like a reasonable course of action.”
Some other notable medieval medicine includes bloodletting, drilling holes in heads to let out evil spirits, and flagellation—trying to cure the plague by whipping yourself as penance to God.
How about some medieval obstetrics?
“If physicians believed the uterus had made its way toward the top of a woman’s body, he placed unpleasant-smelling fumes under her nose and sweet-smelling fumes between her legs. The hope was that this would cause the uterus to retreat back to its rightful place in the body.”
I guess they thought the uterus had a functional nose? Like, how else would it know something smelled good or bad?
And I wonder if you couldn’t afford a doctor maybe you just ask your husband to fart on your face while you shoved flowers up your cooch.
Today I learned 3D animation is a horror show outside the camera’s field of view.
There is now a spiritual successor to this nightmare fuel…
I think we can update the expression “you don’t want to know how the sausage gets made” to “you don’t want to see the reverse perspective of 3D animation.”
When I went to this location I ended up taking 250 photos. I can only get out once or twice per month so I try to find ways to create as many interesting photos as possible. When I got home and started editing I looked for different compositions, interesting crops, or I just tried to make adjustments I wouldn’t normally do. When I had the instinct to go right, I would go left.
I actually ended up with about 50 photos I liked, but these 16 were the hero shots. I am proud of every one of these photos. Proud I was able to extract so much creativity out of the limitations I had to work within.
The interesting thing about taking photos during and after sunset is the camera sees different things than our eyeballs. The sky turns a deep blue and there is a glow on the horizon that just appears as darkness to your peepers. But if you leave your shutter open for 20 to 30 seconds all of that light is still there for you to capture.
Since I started learning to cook eggs in a pan I have been trying to solve various problems in my usual way… buying gadgets.
Because I love gadgets.
My first problem was that I wasn’t happy with my whisking. I didn’t feel like I was getting the egg whites and yolks fully incorporated. So I bought this fork whisker thingie.
It has little holes in the tines for optimum whisking!
Or so the Amazon page said.
I thought it would be the size of a normal fork. But in reality, it was gigantic and unwieldy.
I felt it was so large that it actually made it *harder* to whisk eggs.
So that has been retired to the drawer and has not seen the light of day since.
Then I was having trouble flipping my omelettes. So I got a special omelette flipper.
This helped a little, but it was too thick and I still had trouble getting it underneath.
Into the drawer it went with its whisking fork friend.
These have a very thin edge and really get underneath the omelette well. This was my first big success in egg gadgetry. I was able to achieve my first successful fold using this.
Then I was becoming frustrated with egg cracking. I couldn’t do it consistently. I tried on the side of the pan. I tried on the flat countertop. I was improving over time, but I still felt like a gadget could be helpful.
In my brain I was envisioning some electronic doodad that used A.I. cracking technology to perfectly open the egg.
It’s just a small dish with a raised edge in the middle. Just about the simplest solution imaginable. Doesn’t even take batteries.
And it is fucking fantastic.
It’s called the “Crack'em” and so I like to say “Release the Crack'em!” when I use it.
You do have to develop a technique, but once you get that down, it cracks eggs perfectly. And it gives you a nice clean section to pull apart the eggshell. And the yolk doesn’t drip out as much before you are ready to release it.
Everyone should get a Crack'em.
I still wanted to solve my incorporation issue. I got better at whisking but I still felt like a gadget could improve things.
This thing is nuts. For the low price I am really amazed at how solid and well-built it feels. And it fucking pulverizes the eggs into a perfectly homogenized substance where white and yolk no longer exist and you just have… egg.
Pure 10,000% incorporated egg.
And with this gadget I was able to increase my egg fluffiness by 20%. And my eggs were already pretty damn fluffy.
The egg pulverizer is also very easy to clean. You just run water and turn the blade and angle it so it doesn’t spray you in the face. You will get sprayed in the face before you figure out that angle. So prepare yourself for that.
And that is my gadget journey so far.
I’m considering this weird flippy pan that would allow me to cook my omelettes evenly on both sides, but I am in a scrambled eggs era so I’m not sure I need that right now.
It also looks like I could easily yeet hot omelette juice into my face if I am not careful. So I might just stick to my traditional pan.
OH! And one non-gadget thing I learned.
If you have seen The Bear there was a scene where Sydney cooks an omelette and crunches potato chips on top.
And it works! Tastes great on scrambled eggs as well.
Potato chips, who would have thought?
It’s a little embarrassing to be 42 and just now learning how to use a stove and cook things in a pan. I have a few gaps in my assortment of adulting skills. When you spend 20 hours per day in bed for the past two decades, certain things just aren’t a priority.
When my parents were around we would split up tasks according to our strengths. My dad was good at cooking. My mom was good with the budget. I was good at technology. We used to joke that the 3 of us almost added up to 1 functional person.
But after my parents died I realized I had to learn those adult tasks they took care of for our family unit. And I’m reminded of those awful boomer memes where they think young people can’t figure out a stick shift and cursive.
And what they don’t seem to realize is that life skills can be learned at just about any stage of said life. I mean, if you give someone YouTube and an empty parking lot, they can learn to drive stick if they need to.
And I guess they could learn cursive as well if they develop a pen-palling hobby or something.
What I’m trying to communicate is that learning things later in life is not some impossible task.
And so that is what I’m doing.
I learned how to budget my money (mostly). I learned how to do my laundry. I learned how to cook things in a pan.
I keep having to relearn how to write a check because I don’t do it very often and that is kind of annoying. So if a boomer put me on the spot and surprised me with an urgent check that needed to be filled out, I would have to do a google image search on my phone as a reminder.
But yeah, I’m figuring shit out.
Also, I learned cursive from Sister Mary and I learned how to drive a stick shift as a teenager.
So… you better hide that Jeep.
If you see a post-it note where you parked and it says “It’s mine now!” in cursive… wasn’t me.
