Eclipse in Antarctica

[mmcirvin]

When I saw this terrific image of a total solar eclipse in Antarctica, distorted by atmospheric refraction, with a guy standing in front I was a bit disturbed by the fact that the moon's disc seems to be darker than the blue sky surrounding the corona, which isn't optically possible: this is the kind of thing pompe complains about in science-fiction illustrations. It makes some sense, though: the picture is a composite image designed to evoke what the event actually looked like, in the extremely limited range of brightnesses available to a picture on a computer. In the individual shots the moon isn't darker than the sky, but that may well be what your eyes would register were you there, because of the contrast with the brighter corona.

Taking the shots was apparently quite an adventure. (The guy standing in the shot is a fantasy/SF artist.)

Comments

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

That's what makes me giggle at "purist" photographers who scoff at tone-mapped, locally-adapted HDR photos for not being true representations of what the motif actually looked like. Someone needs to tell them that the eye and the camera both capture only a fraction of the true image, and that they capture different subsets.

Adapting images from a camera to evoke what the eye (which certainly does some extreme local adaptation) sees isn't any less "true" than showing the butchering the camera made of the scene.

(Which is not to say that people don't totally overdo the local adaptation in their HDR photos.)