Saturday 21 March 2015

MacAskill tricks with the Eclipse!

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle - the bull jumped over the moon! Well, Red Bull-sponsored Danny MacAskill got pretty close during the solar eclipse yesterday!
Photo by Rutger Pauw/Red Bull content pool

So yesterday morning we huddled around looking through our jazzy specs in Jodrell Bank or posed with pinhole cameras and colanders in Cornwall to see the first almost total solar eclipse of the century.

I remember the big event in 1999 and how everywhere went slightly dark for a moment in London, and then we all cheered and celebrated this momentous occasion!

This time I was in an office in Macclesfield. The sun was shrouded in cloud, it was all a bit grey, then there was apparently an 89% covering of the sun by the moon. The sun came out and people celebrated that we had seen the eclipse. The office going dark and then light again as the sun comes in and out of view happens on any day of the year, but yesterday was special because it was Solar Eclipse day!

Meanwhile in Skye, northern Scotland, where there would have been around a 96% eclipse, Danny MacAskill made much more of the occasion by doing this shoot with photographer Rutger Pauw. Smart move. MacAskill never ceases to impress me with his tricks, and I have enjoyed the various films he's done. I guess he would just see this as having a bit of fun at home - it's jolly amazing though. Here's the account from Pauw and MacAskill of how they produced this photo.

No comments: