The Solar Eclipse

I haven't been setting the alarm for my morning escapades because it doesn't matter much if I go out on most uneventful days. The eclipse, however, is a pretty unique event. With the show set to kick off ~5:16, I set the alarm for 4:30. My coffee and I were on site by ~5.

Previously, I encountered Nick on my early shoot, but on this morning, Bob was out there, ready to snap at a moments notice, as it were. He had set up on the other side of the road, a little farther down.

This ↓↓ is an early photo. I couldn't tell at this brightness, but the eclipse had already begun. It was even brighter and less apparent to the naked eye than in the photo.

In point of fact, the sun was so bright, that I am not sure I could have discerned that there was an eclipse at all if I hadn't known. Perhaps I would have been able to see the eclipse when it was at its maximum as shown below, but one tries to avoid actually looking at it. I only looked through the camera screen during this shoot.

It was quite bright out, and I had to underexpose by a lot to capture the eclipse. I did this with the help of my 10-stop neutral density filter which resulted in this ↓↓ image. Most photo show the sun as white, but I wanted to retain colour by underexposing so hugely.  

Apparently, there was a more complete eclipse in other latitudes.
but this was the maximum coverage at 45.1°N.

I did try to blend exposures to capture at least some of the sky and foreground trees, but this ↑↑ was all that I could mange to do. My hope is that the clouds with some trees at the bottom do give a bit of context. Otherwise, the straight eclipse image, before I blended, was pure black beyond the subject itself..

However it happened, I did capture the eclipse. While I have no particular use for bucket lists, this is a little moment for me to store in my memory banks. I don't suppose that I will see another or will be compos mentis if I do.