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I finally found my old film shots from the 1999 solar eclipse
Cleaned out a box in my garage. Found a roll of Kodak Gold 200 from that day. I had a cheap telescope and a homemade solar filter. The photos are blurry and the colors are weird. But you can see the diamond ring effect. It took me three tries to get that shot. Anyone else have old eclipse photos they dug up?
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the_tara7mo ago
You mentioning the homemade solar filter and blurry shots really got me. I used to think eclipse photos were only worth keeping if they were super sharp and perfect (like the pro shots you see). Finding my own old, messy attempts changed that for me. The weird colors and blur actually feel more real now, like they captured the shaky excitement of the moment. That diamond ring shot is yours, and the struggle to get it is the whole story. My perfect, clean phone shots from the last eclipse don't feel half as special.
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abby8365mo ago
And honestly? Those pro shots kind of LIE to us a little. They make it look like every eclipse is this perfectly composed, calm event when it's COMPLETELY the opposite. You're outside fumbling with a cardboard filter, the temperature drops weird, and everyone's shouting and pointing at the sky. My favorite picture from 2017 is literally just a crescent shadow through a colander on my driveway, and I love it more than any clean corona shot. It remembers what it FELT like to be there, not just what it looked like.
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stone.barbara7mo ago
Funny how the blurry ones end up meaning more. My own messy shots from back then just feel honest, like they held the actual moment instead of just the picture. Those three tries are what you really kept.
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