Solar Eclipse with Mona Lisa

Here's Kazimir Malevich's painting "Solar Eclipse with Mona Lisa" -- surrealist, of course:

Also titled "Composition with Mona Lisa," dated 1914.

A photo that I took on May 20, 2012, during a partial eclipse in Santa Barbara, California.

In the photo, the little gaps in the leaves of a tree are projecting crescent-shaped shadows because of the slit effect. When the sun is its normal disc shape, the projections are circles. The shape of the light source is projected no matter what the shape of the slit between the leaves.

Leonardo Da Vinci wrote about the slit effect in Codex Atlanticus:

"I say that the front of a building -- or any open plaza or field  -- which is illuminated by the sun has a dwelling opposite to it, and if, in the front which does not face the sun; you make a small round hole, all the illuminated objects will project their images through that hole and be visible inside the dwelling on the opposite wall which should be made white; and there, in fact, they will be upside down, and if you make similar openings in several places in the same wall you will have the same result from each. Hence the images of the illuminated objects are all everywhere on this wall and all in each minutest part of it. The reason, as we clearly know, is that this hole must admit some light to the said dwelling, and the light admitted by it is derived from one or many luminous bodies. If these bodies are of various colors and shapes the rays forming the images are of various colors and shapes, and so will the representations be on the wall."