Chapter 3.3.1.
Caverna Magica
The new cave
When we moved to Novi Jelkovec, we came to a completely new apartment—I was the first inhabitant of my chamber. It was small, simple, meanwhile ascetically furnished. (It housed only the things necessary for my daily functioning in material life—a hospital bed, a wheelchair, a personal computer with a wall mount for a monitor, and a cabinet for my clothes… also supporting a camera with a robotic stand!) I like to call it the hermit’s cave. At first, the completely blank white walls cried out to be decorated with… something.
In the midst of thinking about decorating those walls with pictures, photos, and flower pots, the answer to those questions came up by itself. It was offered by the summer abundance of potted geraniums and carnations on the outside window sill. But in agreement with the windows on the opposite buildings and the many cars parked in front of our building (the apartment is on the ground floor)! It soon became clear that these basic prerequisites enable a wonderful phenomenon, which can transport the observer (thanks to photography—not only me) to another dimension. Into a parallel world that miraculously resembles the reality outside the cave, but with a certain distance (any resemblance to Plato is unintentional). Namely:
Shadopics
The summer sun shines at a certain angle and reflects off the windshields of those parked cars and the opposite window panes. Thus the reflected rays of light pass through the flower bushes on both windowsills straight into my cave – delineating beautiful shadow pictures on the empty walls! Since the window is facing north, I can watch that light show throughout the day (of course – on a clear day) as it follows the course of the sun. In the morning on the western wall, around noon on the southern wall (since it is behind me, then I can only see it lying flat or using my camera), and on the eastern wall in the afternoon! There is also the library building, about 100 meters to the east, which is completely glazed and reflects the light of the setting sun in the evening, making patterns on the western wall of my room again.
The magic cave
As I mentioned earlier, the camera was always ready to capture visitors or flowers brought by them or the family. So, as soon as I discovered this phenomenon, I enthusiastically took several of those shadopics and came up with a procedure for their subsequent post-processing (with the aim of toning and enhancing too-weak contrasts) As I later noticed the regularity/frequency of their appearance, a new project was developed (recently suspended due to technical reasons and discontinued due to health reasons). It is not so much photographic as, let’s say, photographical! I call those pictures photograbbed shadographs, and the whole project Caverna Magica.
NOTE regarding the name:
Although many of the pictures in this album have their own names, the entire project, as a hommage, is named after Andreas Vollenweider’s eponymous 1982 music album, which strongly marked my youth.
The majority of these shadographs, classified into three series, can be seen in Chapter 4.1.3. and in FAA collections. (Just partially on fotozine.org—the greater part of the first series only…)
Slideshow-overviews
On January 1st, 2012, a collection of four photograbbed shadographs from the Caverna Magica project won the Grand prix at the New Year’s exhibition of the Split Photo Club. Not long after that (in January 2012), I summarized that project in a short slideshow overview, cm1:
Photographed shadographs that followed in 2012-14 are summarized in the cm2 slideshow:
Time-lapse
During the development of the project, my interest in time-lapse photography, i.e. video, intensified. Which led to making some videos as a sideline and putting them on my YouTube channel. You can view a selection of several of them here: