Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Time touring...

...diving in a Cambrian Sea
ER — (archived)

When I worked for an oil company in Pittsburgh, one of my favorite hangouts was at the museum. They had a natural history exhibit there of simulated underwater scenes from different geological eras. These were dioramas of the shallow water marine life of those times, composed of very authentic-looking lifesize models of all sorts of weird extinct critters, like crinoids, trilobites, ammonites, etc, all painted in garish colors, frolicking in a very realistic coral reef-like environment. These were placed in recesses in a dark room behind glass, and illuminated with indirect blue-green light so it looked like you were staring into a series of aquariums populated by these beasties. I took time exposure photographs of all of these scenes, composed and cropped in such a way that the prints looked like actual photographs taken under water. I took particular care to avoid reflections off the glass and so forth that might give it away.

I got married that year, and my wife and I went on our honeymoon to the Florida Keys. I bought an underwater camera to document our snorkeling adventures, and made it a point to tell all the geologists at work about my new toy and how I planned to use it. When we came back, they all asked to see my snorkeling pictures, so I gave them the slides of the pictures I had taken at the museum, without any further comment or explanation.

It was one of my finer moments.

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