Because Corvallis was in the path of totality, I was able to sit comfortably in my driveway and watch the entire thing. I built a camera obscura, or pinhole camera, and took some photos of the event. Well, I took 117 photos, to be precise, but quickly deleted about one-fourth of those upon first review--out of focus, weird angle, didn't get the entire pinhole pattern in the image. Since I knew exactly, to the second, when it would begin, I spent about 20 minutes fooling around with the pinhole camera, experimenting with my imaging setup: how far to hold the pinholes from my viewing paper, what was the best angle for the pinholes so sunlight would hit the holes as perpendicularly as possible, where to hold the digital camera, how close to the viewing paper the camera needed to be to get a clean image. Here is my setup:
Yep: a piece of white paper taped to a flattened cardboard box propped up against a chair, a piece of cardboard from some junk mail with a hole covered with a piece of foil, and two rulers taped on to hold it nice and straight. That's some high-tech shit right there. In a nod to whimsy, I decided to poke a pattern of holes into the foil, not just one.
It was a neat event and I'm glad I got to observe it.
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| This one is my favorite. I only cropped it down a bit, no other edits. |
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| Stupid plane flew by just before totality, leaving a con-trail in the sky. You can see my shitty little camera trying hard to find that dark spot of the moon in the center. |
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