confessions of a nonlinearmind

Okay, a true story about sex, astronomy, and photography…

Okay, it was my senior year in college and I was SO into my required Astronomy class that I often couldn’t even remember if it was called astronomy or astrology. Anyway, for a project, I chose to photograph the stars with an open shutter for a few hours. My girlfriend Jennie was quite a photog, so I figured it’d be a breeze. Of course, I waited till the last minute on it.

The weekend before it was due, she and I were at her house in Daytona. Around 2 in the morning, we drove out to a secluded beach where there wasn’t much artificial light, set up a blanket and set up the camera. Of course there wasn’t much to do, so we stripped on down and got freaky. We also walked naked along the beach, which was probably one of the most freeing and exhilarating things I’ve ever done.

Of course there wasn’t digital back then, so I had to wait a day to get the result back. When I did, I found that rather than stars streaking in brilliant arcs across the sky, there were random jags and blurs. The best we could figure, one of the tripod legs must have been resting on the corner of the blanket. I think I still got a good grade on it, as the “effort” was clearly there, something just happened in my methodology!