eclipse photography | Laurie Toby Edison

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Laurie says:

I just put up two photos on Instagram (ignore cross out – the link works). Both pin hole camera images. One is a Pandemic Shadow photo and the other is an eclipse photo I took in 2017.

“The oval and the almost circles in these shadows are actually images of the sun as filtered through the leaves, which at certain times of day act like a pin hole camera and take the large image and in making it tiny “pin hole” images reflected into the shadows. So there are always lots of these to see at different times and places for photos, Of course finding the beautiful ones is not so simple.”

I’ve been fascinated by this since the first time I saw an eclipse reflected in the shadows. I’m going to put an eclipse photo up next on Instagram and write about this more.

There is something magical (a word I rarely use) about these images since I first saw them across the street from my studio a long time ago.
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These are part of a group of photos I took at the total eclipse in 2017 on the Oregon-Idaho border.

I’ve always wanted to see a total eclipse and this was my first chance to see one that was in a reasonable distance. Photographers always photograph the eclipse itself but aside from my fascination with the pin hole camera effect it was a chance to photograph something not usually seen as part of the eclipse. And however focused other aspects of my work are, I always am focusing on seeing differently.
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I took a whole series of these as the sun was eclipsing and then reopening. I was so absorbed in the shadows, I had to remember to see the eclipse! I was very lucky to find just the right place to do this and the red leaves really enhanced the beauty of the images.
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Follow my new Pandemic Shadow photos on Instagram.

Laurie says:

These are my first pass on the photos I took at the total eclipse on August 21st.

I took a lot of photos and many of them look like good art on first pass. But this is going to take a while, so I decided to post these now. Except for a minuscule amount of cropping they are exactly as they were shot. There is no other use of Photoshop.

When there is an eclipse, the shadows of the leaves reflect the shadowing of the sun like a pinhole camera. I had seen this in a partial eclipse in San Francisco and I knew that if I was in the right spot I wanted to photograph them. This is a snapshot of where I was. The trees had red leaves and the shadows were perfect.