I tried to get a good photograph of yesterday’s solar eclipse but I was unsuccessful. If you live in a cocoon and don’t know, yesterday we in the United States had a total solar eclipse. I tried to get photograph but I could not get any of the solar eclipse worthy glasses that I could use to filter out the radiation, ultra violet light, and infrared rays. You can read about such glasses here.
In
2017, the last solar eclipse in the local area, I was able to use the glasses over
my camera phone and filter out the obscuring rays. Yesterday I tried taking pictures with just
the phone—I pointed the phone in the general direction of the sun without
looking into it and snapped—but all I got was a ball of flame with some weird
rays or odd shaped sun. Here are some
examples. These have all been photo
edited to try to make distinct the passing moon.
I think there is a passing object in front of the sun, but it’s not very distinct. If you want to see the neat pictures I took of the solar eclipse in 2017, I shared them on this blog post.
If
you want to see video of yesterday's actual, full solar eclipse you can
see it in this YouTube clip.
All this eclipse talk reminded me of a song by Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Tyler has a very distinct husky voice, which I think perfectly fits what this might be called a torch song. The voice exudes the pain of the subject.
A little history on “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” It was a song written by Jim Steinman, who was the composer of most of those great songs that the performer Meat Loaf recorded. Steinman composed lots of great hits, but “Total Eclipse of the Heart may be his biggest. I think it was so big because of the perfectly sung performance from Bonnie Tyler. Her distinct voice elevates this song to something special. According to Meat Loaf, he was supposed to record the song but the deal with Steinman fell through. He might have done a fine job singing it, but I can’t imagine it would have been better than Bonnie’s performance.
The
song was recorded in 1983, spending four weeks on the charts as number
one. I did not know Bonnie Tyler is
Welch. Her voice sounds so American
country. Some lyrics.
Once upon a time, I was
falling in love
But now I'm only falling
apart
There's nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the
heart
Once upon a time, there
was light in my life
But now there's only love
in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart
It’s
just a wonderful song.
Don’t feel bad- you tried. Not everyone can take as good of eclipse pics as my son did last Oct. Btw I love Bonnie Tyler!
ReplyDeleteThanks. And she does have an interesting voice.
DeleteP.S. It’s Welsh…..
ReplyDeleteHa! Thanks. I'll leave it the way it is to prod my humility. :)
DeleteBy the way, that middle picture up above with the house and the sun has a Van Gogh look to it with the filter editing. I think I'll have that printed and framed.
ReplyDeleteYes it is a good pic. Do you find cellphone pics lose some definition when you enlarge and print? That’s my experience.
ReplyDeleteYes, I find that too, very much so. Maybe it won't print that well then. It's worth a try. Thanks for pointing that out. I never thought about it before.
Delete