1h

November 20, 2011 10:03 PM

1h by Hans-Christian Schink.
posted by beshtya (30 comments total)

Could you give a little more context here? It looks like a photographer with a flatworm on his lense.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:06 PM on November 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Aha. Ok. These are one-hour exposures of the sun. The titles of the individual photographs are the date, the time and the lat/long of the location.
posted by beshtya at 10:07 PM on November 20, 2011

Ooooh, cool. Thanks.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:09 PM on November 20, 2011

This is awesome. And I kind of like how, on first viewing, they appear to be unremarkable (if weird) photos with odd exposures in the middle of each one. Crazy to find out what that odd exposure actually is.
posted by koeselitz at 10:23 PM on November 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

But why is it black, I would expect it to be
white.
posted by quazichimp at 10:28 PM on November 20, 2011

quazichimp, I'd like to know that as well. I suspect it is some sort of Sabattier effect going on. I think he uses paper, and not film, so it could be a paper-only effect. See also Solargraphy, which exploits long-exposures on paper to get colour on black-and-white paper.
posted by beshtya at 10:43 PM on November 20, 2011

So in the northern hemisphere the morning sun goes from lower left to upper right, and the afternoon sun goes from upper left to lower right.

In the southern hemisphere the reverse is true. I knew this, intellectually speaking.

But it's still disorienting to see the southern hemisphere pictures with the times attached to them.
posted by madcaptenor at 10:46 PM on November 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Where by "the reverse" I mean that the southern hemisphere morning sun goes from lower right to upper left, and the afternoon sun goes from upper right to lower left. Everything's weird down there, but the sun still rises in the morning and sets in the evening.
posted by madcaptenor at 10:47 PM on November 20, 2011

Thanks Beshtya, that clears it up for me.
...now that I think about it, I have seen this
effect many times before just did not realize it.
posted by quazichimp at 10:58 PM on November 20, 2011

Thanks. I'm finding that, on meditation, it gets more fascinating.
posted by quarsan at 11:05 PM on November 20, 2011

Hey quazi, your comments are lovely little poems in themselves.

I suspect that these are paper-based (due to the surface effects in some of them). However, I am not completely sure. On comparing with the much-longer exposures made by Michael Wesely on film, the difference is apparent immediately, isn't it.
posted by beshtya at 11:14 PM on November 20, 2011

I like how sometimes the picture was taken in the AM and sometimes it was taken in the PM, and how the AM shots move downward from left to right and the PM shots move upward from left to right a lot of the time, but not always, and how it seems to relate to those number thingies on the left.
posted by twoleftfeet at 11:15 PM on November 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Beshtya, not knowing much on the chemistry of photography
I don't know what to think now, your last link has
compounded the variables. I'm going to assume that
certain films can be ruined by intense light, and the
same goes for paper. I think you are right about the photos
in your original post being paper, they do have that look.
posted by quazichimp at 12:07 AM on November 21, 2011

i think the sun's image is actually bleaching or destroying the dye that would otherwise show up darkest in the negative. and then in the enlarger the bleached areas show up completely black....

in the second (Weseley) link he's got better film or less exposure....
posted by dongolier at 12:11 AM on November 21, 2011

An interview with Hans-Christian Schink including some discussion of the method involved.
posted by Stoatfarm at 1:57 AM on November 21, 2011

Aha. In Stoatfarm's link Schink describes his process as solarization, and references Minor White's Black Sun. Quite an image he has there. Thanks Stoat.
posted by beshtya at 2:50 AM on November 21, 2011

This is like the friendliest thread ever.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 2:56 AM on November 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

stoatfarm, nice link...
the Minor White photo was created when the shutter
froze?... I assuming that the shutter froze open, and the solarization
affect took place. what a unique shot...
...by the way...what a unigue guy Minor
was.
posted by quazichimp at 3:35 AM on November 21, 2011

quazi if you like Minor White you might also like the Mordançage process or Pierre Cordier's Chemigrams.
posted by beshtya at 3:54 AM on November 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

Very cool. Why do some of the sun streaks have gaps in them, do you think?
posted by gwint at 4:07 AM on November 21, 2011

gwint, I think some of those are clouds blocking the sun. Some others are branches of trees or telephone poles or whathaveyous.
posted by beshtya at 4:14 AM on November 21, 2011

I like these a lot. The aperture used must be impossibly tiny.
posted by triceryclops at 4:34 AM on November 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

triceryclops: ND filter? Stoatfarm's interview link doesn't shed any ... doesn't reveal any clues.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:05 AM on November 21, 2011

Beautiful. Thanks for the link. I wish there were some higher res ones...
posted by Hartham's Hugging Robots at 7:19 AM on November 21, 2011

Thanks for posting this. And to beshtya for the links. I'm in the process of setting up a darkroom with the aim of playing with chemistry and alternate processing techniques and this thread is most inspirational.
posted by Artaud at 7:22 AM on November 21, 2011

I clicked this link without context (hadn't read comments yet) and I thought the black bar was supposed to be a UFO. I'm glad that's not what the site was.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:34 AM on November 21, 2011

Reciprocity failure most often addresses under-exposure, but over-exposure has been studied as well.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:10 AM on November 21, 2011

Sticky, RF and the Schwarzschild effect are generally considered valid for film at very long exposure times, wherein the usual inverse relationship between time and light-intensity collapses. While this also happens at the other end of the spectrum, i.e. at very high values of light-intensity and low values of exposure time, this is rare outside scientific imaging and/or lightning simulations.

Now you may consider paper as a kind of slow film, say something between 2 to 10 ASA [1]. However, I would not apply reciprocity failure to black and white paper (which I suspect Schink is using) for an hour-long exposure.

For modern empirical analyses and rules-of-thumb for RF, see the Krohn-Halm catenary model, which may be calibrated for each film, or the so called Bond-Gainer model, derived from Howard Bond and "Gadget" Gainer's calculations.

In my personal experiments I have found significant deviations from Howard Bond's model, and I find Gainer's model a better fit.

1. Note that there have also been films produced (by Polaroid, e.g.) at the two extremes values of 2 ASA and 20,000 ASA. How RF affects these is beyond me.
posted by beshtya at 10:30 AM on November 21, 2011

Chris McCaw and Harlan Erskine have also explored the intentional use of solarization to take "black sun" photos.

...And to me, the differences in their artistic approaches is fascinating. For example: Schink, in at least one case, has used a fairly precise analytical method to pre-plan the location of the sun relative to objects in the foreground. Whereas McCaw, in at least one case, has allowed his camera lens to act like a magnifying glass, literally burning the emulsion of the photo paper.
posted by arm's-length at 1:10 PM on November 21, 2011

Oops! I should've said that Schink often uses precise analytical methods.
posted by arm's-length at 1:14 PM on November 21, 2011