Indianapolis | Alex Farris Photo Blog

"I'll have two more entries up later this week."
-Alex Farris, July 21, 2014

I'm rather silly, thinking I would post two more wedding-related blog entries as my organic chemistry class was finishing and my MCAT studying was about to start. Just before the end of this year, let's correct that myopia.

The first missed entry was the Kaiser/Rhoderick wedding. Kayleigh Kaiser is the oldest sister of a good friend from middle school and high school, and as he is stationed in Puerto Rico, seeing him was a great bonus on top of the good times, money, and photos. The ceremony was held at the gorgeous Holy Rosary Catholic Church just south of downtown Indy, and the reception was... decidedly not downtown, at a reception hall in Plainfield. I eventually drove from my home to the groom's Plainfield home, to Holy Rosary, to a downtown Arby's to wait out the rain, to a park in Plainfield, to the reception hall, to my home. Lots of driving, but no matter: I enjoyed the day. And finally, the photos get their time in the blog spotlight (they were already posted to the shop.

Next up: the wedding of a TA from this summer's organic chemistry class.

Yesterday, there was a partial solar eclipse visible to pretty much the entire United States. I really wanted to see it; I missed the nine previous times a partial eclipse was visible in Indianapolis in my lifetime, and I have to wait until 2017 for my next opportunity (but first chance I get, I'm booking a hotel room in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to see totality).

To watch this eclipse safely, I found a piece of welder's glass left over from the transit of Venus in 2012. I wanted to do better than take photos of a green sun, though, and Roberts had what I needed: a neutral density filter (the test of which captured the first of the four suns shown below). It makes everything about 10 stops darker, so it's not feasible for anything but taking photos of really bright objects. It was worth the money, both because this was my first eclipse and because I could use it in the future to take photos of sunspots. I'm a nerd.

I then found a spot along Eagle Creek Reservoir, called a friend over to see the show with me, waited until 5:32pm, and... watched clouds cover the Sun. They were patchy enough at first, so I shot until a solid wall of cloud completely blocked the view half an hour before sunset. I was a bit disappointed...

...but only a small bit. Every time I could fire a clear-ish shot, I looked at the back of my camera and saw something I had never seen in person before: Earth's nearest celestial neighbor casting a shadow onto me, blocking out at least a little bit of the light that Earthly life has depended on for five billion years. I said, "This is so cool!" at least five times in the hour I spent shooting.

Composite of four photos taken at 2:12pm, 5:56pm, 6:02pm, and 6:12pm. Captured with a Nikon D300, 80-200mm lens, and 77mm ND1000 filter.

Tomorrow, there's a partial solar eclipse over most of the U.S., so the next blog entry will be all about that magic. Today, though, I have to catch up a bit on my Star photo assignments. Here, you'll find photos of a 150-year-old house being moved half a mile north, a cabaret I covered last year, and one of the more unique shows I've ever seen, Optical Popsicle.

As a bonus, I woke up entirely too early on Oct. 8, then waited half an hour and took a photo of the total lunar eclipse. Together with tomorrow's solar eclipse, you might be seeing a pattern develop. You'd be right.

Cast members travel through a black hole during Optical Popsicle, an annual variety show by the collective Know No Stranger, at The Toby Theatre at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2014.