The Equinox Project

Wednesday 21 March 2007 was the day of the Spring Equinox, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere experienced their Autumn Equinox.

As it was, the equinox wasn't on a fixed time. Rather it was spread out over more than a day. It just depended on your location when the equinox actually took place. The not make things more difficult than necessary (meaning: not difficult at all), we stuck to 21 March. The aim was to make it a day dedicated to photography. Record these 24 hours, from midnight to midnight, in any way, with any gear, on any medium.

Ha! That's easy! I still hear people saying as much. But things turned out a little different. As always, life can throw some nice, big spanners in the works. Life and work often interrupted or even prevented people from shooting entirely. Gear failures, lack of inspiration, poor concentration and many other factors played their rolls. All life is a stage, someone once said. After this day, some people were bitterly disappointed with their poor performance on that stage. :) Others were more lucky and were able to muster the will, inspiration and concentration to put in their best effort.

For me this day was a long but fruitful day. First of all, I set up a webcam to record the passing of the day every 30 seconds. A time lapse movie will be the result once I'm finished putting all the images together.

Secondly, I shot a roll of film recording the street on the other side of the house. I started at midnight, recording the last of the trams, and the last of the people out and about. I picked it up early in the morning to record the world waking up. At the end of the afternoon and in the evening, I again shot photos. These photos still need to be scanned at time of writing.

During the day I took a long stroll through town. I shot 4 (5?) rolls of Lucky SHD100 and Efke KB100 B&W film with my Leica M2 and a Jupiter-8 50/2 lens. Much to my surprise, really. People who know me know that I mainly shoot digital. I've been shooting my Epson R-D1 almost exclusively for nearly 2 years now.

I also shot a roll of Lucky SHD100 120 film. The negatives were scanned on my Canon Lide20 flatbed scanner and the results could be much better. I'm wondering whether a scan from a (6x9cm) contact print would yield better results. I've never done any contact printing so I have no idea how to go about all this but I'd like to try.

This blog is meant to hold the photos I selected from what I shot during the Spring equinox of 2007. If there's ever a repeat project, the results could very well end up here too. But it's not that time yet. First let's kick off with some photos of this year.

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Shards of Photography