Moonrise in Shadowland

The Round Robin Challenge this week is to capture the eerie and pensive mood of the season. Anything goes.

Inspired by a chapter on scanner art in a book about closeup photography, I decided to fire up the machine I got for my birthday and try my hand at that. Of dozens of shots, this is the best of the bunch.

The "moon" is actually a white stone, scanned in a dark room with the lid of the scanner open and one light source to the side. The "land" is a black T-shirt draped over the edge of the lid. I meant to go back and make a cleaner shot when time allowed, but you know how that goes.

My first thought was to try shrouding my head in black and scanning my face, eyes closed. I was going for a floating death mask Halloween thing. Man, was that a bad idea. (Ladies, if you really want a good scare, try this: Lay a mirror on a low table, bend over to see your reflection, and see what happens to your face.) You will never, never be seeing those shots. Ever.

Experiment B involved scanning a crystal ball paperweight. That turned out pretty well, producing kind of an alien planet effect:

















Interestingly enough, there is controversy over whether scanned images are actually photographs. I can see why serious photographers would have an issue. But if, like me, all you do is arrange the shot, fiddle with the light and settings, and push the button, then I don't see the difference. It's the same process for either machine. Either way, you end up with a digital image. Either way, it's a lot of fun.

To see what the other Robins found in their forays into Shadowland, please go to the main page and visit their blogs. You'll be glad you did!

*PS - These would have looked much better if I could have kept them long and thin, like the original images from the scanner platen, but they got squarish when rotated 90 degrees. If anyone knows how to preserve dimensions when rotating images, I'd appreciate your telling me how to do that.