El Rancho Pendejo in The Duck! City was the perfect spot to catch the 2023 annular solar eclipse.
Herself scored some paper safety goggles and we inspected the celestial event at our leisure, from the back patio.
Things grew dark and chilly, the birds went all radio silence, and the sun looked like a big Power button just waiting for Someone to click it off. Happily, no one did.
And you bet your ass I howled at the sucker like a werewolf. Got to keep the neighbors on their toes.
The light throughout was truly weird, with acid-flashback shadows on the brick pavers and concrete walkway. Put me in mind of Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” it did.
You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could play it myself, now, and it wouldn’t be any plagiarism, either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand years ahead of those parties.
But unlike Hank Morgan, I couldn’t derive any profit from the eclipse; our modern lords and ladies mostly keep their heads where the sun don’t ever shine, preferring to work their mischiefs in the dark. So I just enjoyed it.
Mad Blog Media 
Neat picture! It had me scratching my head for a while. We were about 80% covered down here.
We had a perfect day for it. The Ring of Fire was parked just over the Sandias and we got that really interesting shadow cast by the trees as a bonus.
I have a similar picture I took of leaves shadowing our neighbor’s stucco wall. Pretty cool, as is the light during the annular eclipse, which I suggested to my friends reminded me of the blue bias of old Ektachrome film from back in the day (anyone else remember Ektachrome and Kodachrome?).
Nice explanation here.
“…But why does the color change? It is well known, thanks to the aforementioned Lord Rayleigh, that the daytime sky is blue because of sunlight scattering off molecules in the atmosphere. One can show through straightforward calculations that blue light is scattered more strongly than red. During ordinary days, most of the light gets scattered once in the journey from the Sun to the eye. During an eclipse, however, one can also see light that has been scattered multiple times before reaching the eye, and each scattering event is more favorable to blue light, pushing the overall spectrum to blue. Thus the purple appearance of the sky during an eclipse is due to different light scattering processes becoming more significant…”
https://www.americanscientist.org/blog/macroscope/studying-the-light-of-the-eclipse
Yeah, that is a nice photo. It’s great to hear that viewing was splendid. Our observations from a partial perspective were of the underside of condensing water vapor about 5 thousand feet up. Visual light color – monochrome.
Ektachrome and Kodachrome. Words of music to my ears. Although I didn’t shoot a lot of Extachrome. The Kodachrome 64 was (is) so nice if you’re willing to be patient. Imaging with the joy of chemistry.
I loved Kodachrome. So lovely and rich and livid with reds and shading. Still have some of those slides from back in my youth. But you had to send it out for developing and it was slow film.
A friend of mine taught me to develop Ektachrome myself and that was great. I used it for my own fiddling around as well as for my dissertation research as I could make slides cheap and it was a much faster film. I think Kodachrome was typically ASA 64 and Ektachrome was 200 or faster, so I could carry a small, light camera in the field with a smaller f stop.
Ah, back when we actually did real work.
Khal, wasn’t Kodachrome ASA 25?
I have shot the 64 but I forgot (did not recall) the 25. A quick check on Wiki confirms your statement. I knew Kodachrome was offered in multiple ASA’s but I believe the other option I shot with was the faster 200 version.
I, too, did some checking ‘after’ I posted my question. I do not remember anything but the 25 ASA. Surprised I was after learning of the other speeds. I guess the memory is the first thing to go. BruceM
I can imagine there are some film artists (chemists) out there who seek out old rolls of Kodachrome to shoot and then process to see what excitement they might produce. Similar to shooting old packets of Polaroid instant film.
I didn’t really get into photography until the wizards dumbed it down to my level, though I had a couple SLRs and Super 8 cameras. It’s daunting to hang around with pro shooters and then have your own go at their game, on a par with showing your kindergarten finger-paintings to Jasper Johns.
Digital photography made the form more accessible to slackers like me, the same way the word processor did for wanna-be writers. If there’s an iota of talent hiding in there somewhere, technology makes it easier to find and speeds the learning process — “Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?”
Photography is like cycling or guitars. It’s another black hole that sucks up all your spare cash and whisks it to another dimension, never to be seen again. The photography instructor at the local community college told me to not waste money on fancy equipment. He said get a Pentax K1000 with a basic 50mm lens and start taking black and white photos. I said what about a zoom lens. He said, “zoom with your feet.” Good advice.
It must be driving the camera companies insane. I’m on the B&H mailing list and instead of pitching three-figure point-and-shoots they’re hawking the top-shelf goodies because anyone who wants a better P&S just gets a newer phone.
Yep. I noticed the other day that the camera display at Target was gone. The lady working in that section told me the DVD/Blu Ray section will also be gone soon. Best Buy is getting rid of them too, both in store and ol line. I won’t miss the cameras. I will miss the hard media movies.
I was in the process of writing something about film vs digital and the differences in their aesthetics and blah, blah, blah, but then I realized the discussion stemmed from a couple of nice images from what I would guess is a modest digital camera. I won’t mention the highly variable mind and function of the photographer, that’s too complex an issue for my simple mind, but indeed, it is possible to produce something quite nice and receive acclamation for, without being overwhelmed with equipment, craft schooling or significant financial outlay.
Missed the actual eclipse … one of our 7 ice sessions this weekend … but got outside to see the tail end of it.
https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B1051rzbC2GXrl