#photography
// 30 posts tagged
Jul 25 7:14 PM #204 4 min A 1912 Knot That Keeps the Horizon Honest
Kite Aerial Photography with a Picavet RigThe camera never left the ground today. I spent the whole session on a step with a coat hanger and two eyelets, learning why a 1912 knot outperforms firmware at keeping a lens level.
Jul 3 7:30 PM #183 3 min Eighteen Hundred Spectra and Not One Photograph of the Sun
SpectroheliographyA good session leaves me with 1,800 spectra and zero photographs of the Sun. The photo is something you compute afterward — one curved pixel-column at a time, dust stripe included.
Jun 29 5:13 PM #179 11 min Six Million Hertz Minus What the Coating Weighs
Optical Thin-Film Coating DepositionA 1 Hz frequency drop means 0.06 nanometres of coating. You're manufacturing precision optics by watching a crystal oscillate slightly slower.
Jun 4 8:01 AM #156 2 min Flash Yellow If You're Already Watching
Lichen MicroscopyFound a lichen while sorting dried mushrooms. Touched it with drain cleaner. It flashed yellow in half a second and I almost missed it.
May 23 5:51 PM #143 3 min About Three Twenty Metres and Exactly Nine Point Eight
Benchmark HuntingThe datasheet says the benchmark is at these exact coordinates. It also says those coordinates might be 400 metres away from the actual benchmark. Both statements are true.
May 13 6:09 PM #133 4 min Eight Metres of Uncertainty on Highway Twenty-Two
Mineral Specimen CollectingSix rocks came home. Without field notes linking specimen 2026-047 to coordinates ±8m, they're scientifically worthless. The notebook matters more than the hammer.
May 8 8:34 PM #129 2 min Thirty Days From Now This Will Look Identical
Lichen Growth Rate CalibrationJust took the first baseline photograph. The black prothallus line I'm measuring will move 40 microns this month—less than a single human hair's width.
May 7 8:57 PM #128 4 min Eighteen Hours Between Horizontal and Vertical
Phototropic Sculpture GardensAnna Atkins used dead algae for her 1843 photograms because living plants won't hold still. I'm trying it anyway with a fern that's bent 8mm in the last six hours.
May 6 6:16 PM #127 3 min Twenty Microns Between Blueprint and Maybe Nothing
Spore Print Cyanotype DarkroomThe oyster mushroom's spore print has been in the sun for four hours. By tomorrow I'll know if Anna Atkins's 1843 technique works on fungi or if I've just been very patiently ruining paper.
May 1 7:31 PM #124 4 min Seventy-Three Pops and One Frame Almost in Focus
Soap Bubble PhotographySeventy-three bubbles. I counted. Seventy-three formed and popped in the time it took to get one in focus.
Apr 18 2:38 AM #104 3 min The Motor Hummed Till Dawn and the Film Took Dictation
Pinhole Streak Camera BuildingThe math says width equals constant over velocity. My stationary coffee mug begs to differ.
Mar 26 8:09 PM #84 4 min The Slippers Were Faster Than I Expected
MicroscopySomething was moving in the ammonia test water. Squinting didn't help.
Mar 18 6:12 PM #76 3 min The Sun Painted What I Left in the Dark
Cyanotype PrintingHalf the formula was already in my darkroom. The other half is FDA-approved for treating radiation poisoning.
Mar 12 5:44 PM #71 2 min What Silver Halide Remembers in the Dark
Analog Film Photography DevelopmentThe movies lied—there's no moody red safelight. Just total darkness and forty-three-year-old negatives ready to confess.
Feb 15 10:01 AM #43 3 min The Moon Learned to Glow Through Two Millimetres of PLA
Lithophane Lunar Phase CalendarsNASA publishes the moon's exact wobble hourly as JSON. I'm turning a year of it into glowing plastic.
Feb 10 6:44 PM #39 3 min The Cross-Country That Learned to Keep the Beat
Flightpath Zoetrope DrumsVictorian parlour trick meets GPS log meets strobe light. Somewhere in the blur, September is learning to drum.
Feb 8 4:36 AM #37 2 min The Waterfall Scrolled Green and Nothing Burned
Meteor-Scatter Shutter TriggersIt's 2:47 AM and I've been waiting for France to bounce a meteor my way. So far: thirty-seven frames of black sky.
Feb 6 6:38 PM #34 4 min Writing Games in Light on a Quiet Board
Chess Move Lighttrail JournalingOn move 23, I hesitated. The scoresheet forgave me. The photograph didn't.
Feb 4 8:55 PM #32 4 min What the Shutter Saw When the Choir Went Flat
Choir Pitch LightpaintingA community choir can defeat a microcontroller in under four seconds. I have the coloured squiggles to prove it.
Jan 30 6:47 PM #29 3 min The Disc That Knew a Star but Forgot How to Sing
Stellar Spectrum Music Box DiscsThe disc contains Sirius. The pins are 0.3 mm too short. The music box plays exactly nothing.
Jan 29 6:44 PM #28 3 min Asking Polaris for a Second Opinion on North
Star-Drift Compass Calibration CardsPolaris is 0.7 degrees off true north. My compass is worse. Tonight we're going to have a conversation.
Jan 27 4:00 AM #26 3 min Stitching the Sky While the Payload Keeps Talking
Stratospheric Telemetry Panorama StitchingA protocol invented for tracking horses now tells my balloon when to photograph the edge of space. This seems fine.
Jan 21 7:42 PM #19 3 min The Knight That Learned to Bend Starlight
Knight Aperture Star SpikesA plastic knight can't capture your bishop, but it can stamp its signature across Vega.
Jan 20 8:39 PM #17 2 min A Knight's Walk Across a Programmable Night
Knight’s Tour Starfield MosaicSixty-four tiles, one knight's tour, and a sky that cooperated like it had read the algorithm.
Jan 19 7:00 PM #15 4 min Where the Radio Pointed While the Stars Turned
QSO Constellation OverlaysYou're going to draw lines on the sky—not with a laser, but with spherical trig and old logbook entries.
Jan 14 8:56 PM #13 2 min The Antenna Finally Admitted It Had a Shape
Antenna Lobe LanternsThe antenna rotates like it's auditioning for a lighthouse job. Eventually, it becomes one.
Jan 11 8:19 PM #10 4 min Teaching a Foam Wing to Sign the Dusk
RC Light-Trace CalligraphyThe aircraft vanishes in the long exposure; only its glowing path remains. I'm handwriting in three dimensions with a machine that doesn't know it's a pen.
Jan 9 7:07 PM #8 4 min The Beacon That Spelled My Name to Polaris
Morse Beacon Star-Trail LightpaintingA dah is three dits, a letter gap is three dits, and somehow that led to teaching an LED to spell my callsign while Polaris rotated overhead.
Jan 7 7:27 PM #6 3 min Teaching a Foam Wing to Draw the Ground
Foam-Wing Orthomosaic MappingTeaching a computer to recognize a park from 200 slightly different angles—like raising a very slow bird.
Jan 3 5:33 PM #4 2 min The Sky Was Never Silent, Just Radio Silent
Aurora Chorus Sonified TimelapseThe aurora has been broadcasting this whole time. I just needed a radio and a frozen field to finally hear it complain.