RE: http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/gallery/davidhazy.html Just FYI - this photograph was made as an exersize in producing a fraud, a fake, a hoax, by photographic means. It came out of a discussion in a photoinstrumentation seminar where the topic centered around debunking of photographs sent to me for validation of the existance of ghosts, galactic force fields of alien origin and purported evidence of paranormal events. Since we just had a visit from one of the world's leading astronomical photographers, David Malin, we decided to simulate an image that many people were familiar with. Namely star trails. And do it on Polaroid film rather than digitally, although we did have a team that attempted this in that manner. The fact that the image was "on film" would be a further clue to mislead interpretation. We constructed a "roof" made of black paper into which pinholes were poked to simlulate the night sky. Several layouts of various constellations were purposefully included. The "sky" was held in place by rods spanning the tops of four heavy duty tripods at en elevation of about 1.8 metres (6 feet) above the floor. Under the simulated sky we placed the camera on a turntable that could be rotated at an adjustable rate. The camera was tipped at a slight angle to move the "axis" stars away from the middle of the frame. Its elevation above the horizon would be a clue as to the location of the camera on Earth. Preliminary results were encouraging but we decided we needed some terrestrial reference marks, namely some horizon or something that could be interpreted as such. In the lab we had some N-gauge railroad building models. One of these was suspended / propped up in front of the camera in such a manner that it would rotate right along with the camera. Miniature foliage was added. The illumination level on the building/trees was adjusted so it would only leave a trace of exposure on the film. We made exposures that would simulate elapsed times of a few hours to 12 or so hours in duration by controlling the length of time the shutter was kept open on "B" as the camera/barn scene were rotated under the sky. 12 hours was stretching it a bit and we realized that trying to get out all clues of fakery would entail more time than the 3 hours we had at our disposal. BTW, the "circles" it turns out are not perfect due to wobble in the turntable. Anyway, it was, in fact, more fun to leave errors "in" because this would lead to debate and discussion and learning. I think that I have not left any major bit of information out and that you all can smile about this and maybe suggest improvements or variations on the theme. regards, Andrew Davidhazy, School of Photographic Arts and Sciences/RIT andpph@rit.edu http://www.rit.edu/~andpph
