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Astrophotographer snaps skydiver falling in front of the sun

(www.iflscience.com)
471 points doener | 2 comments | 16 Nov 25 11:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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dahart ◴[16 Nov 25 16:11 UTC] No.45946132[source]▶
Is the full-sun photo edited to remove the paramotor? I just realized it was in the video shot - the head-down dive “tracking” position of the skydiver in the video happens only a few frames after jumping, only for a few frames, and after that he’s tumbling a bit against the sun, with the paramotor still visible. I’m guessing even if the video and still were two different cameras, they wouldn’t have been far enough apart to catch the skydiver without the paramotor?
replies(2): >>45951713 #>>45958059 #
1. cletusw ◴[17 Nov 25 20:44 UTC] No.45958059[source]▶
In the behind the scenes video the photographer makes an offhand comment that yes, he was going to take the silhouette of the skydiver (and maybe some of the immediate surroundings) and composite it with a mosaic of sun images taken around the same time (but without the paramotor present).
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2. Springtime ◴[18 Nov 25 01:57 UTC] No.45960540[source]▶
I recall one of their earlier composites of the sun which was comprised of 90k (!) images and feel that's an acceptable approach to represent the detail and scope desired, yet with this skydiver shot I feel differently in that there is an original shot of the event that is an actual through-the-lens capture but it's not being used and instead the foreground element (the silhouette) is being masked and composited onto a much more detailed composite sun. It's effectively artwork now.

Like if a photo of Philippe Petit's WTC wire walking were instead masked and replaced with separately shot towers—it'd represent the event but technically not the actual snapshot in time it occurred, which kind of reduces the connection with the interesting concept at least for me.