Hatley Studios

Crazy roller coaster of emotions over eclipse weekend. I was not feeling well and was not entirely disappointed that the weather was not looking good and was planning on enjoying the experience and not messing with my camera if clouds were going to be an issue.

Woke up early on Monday to blue skies and got a little excited. I got on my computer and continued mentally preparing for how I was going to shoot. Every photography blog has completely different recommendations, and I have been absorbing differing opinions over the last few months. All in all, I was not too sure what I was going to do, but I was going to make sure I tried most every option and figure it out for myself so that in 2045 I will be ready if things did not go as planned!

Excitement was short-lived...blue turned to white, solid cloud cover. However, about 2 minutes before the eclipse was supposed to begin, clouds parted, and we saw the start of the eclipse with clear skies. Clouds rolled in and out but was able to see most of the progression up to totality.

About 1 minute prior to the main event, heavy clouds rolled in. I was not able to see even a sliver of light during totality. I had my camera set on a 10 second timer to reduce camera shake as I had a long lens with a tripod head not intended for that kind of weight. I preferred 2 seconds but could see it shaking after composing for each shot and took about 5 seconds to settle. I had planned on using a remote application with my ipad but it was not consistent enough and wanted to make sure I was in control and could not find my wired remote but with 3.5 minutes to work with, I knew I had plenty of time. During totality my plan was to bracket exposures as I wanted to capture 7 frames at a time with a 1 stop differential and was going to do that several times while adjusting sensitivity of the camera in hopes of stacking many images with different colors and solar flares that a single image can’t handle. I normally like to get it right with as few images as possible but with this, I was going to spray and pray but the clouds gave me nothing to work with.

I was able to experience what I had read where the birds kind of freaked out and then went silent and crickets started chirping. The dog was staring at the sky wondering what was going on. It was magical.

With only seconds left of totality, the clouds started to part and I could see the ring! Chills ran down my spine. Everything I read was that removing the solar filter could change the focus which I did not agree with with this lens and did not attempt to re-focus. Left it where it was but the rotations had moved the moon out of frame but I went ahead and fired my shot, as I knew I had 10 seconds before it was to begin the capture. I kicked my tripod leg out to get it to move and it landed on the moon, gave it one last adjustment pulling out the tripod leg a touch which I had mastered earlier in the session. Got it composed just before the camera started firing. I looked up to see the sun starting to come out and since my camera was bracketing, I looked down to see the 4th image of the bracket and the result on the monitor was massive over exposure. I shut off the camera to stop the bracketing (which I know I am not supposed to) but knew I was going to get nothing else until I added back the solar filter and moved my settings back to proper starting point and kicked off another exposure. I was so disappointed that I missed it but when I looked at what I got, the first 3 images captured something somewhat usable but the fourth image after the sun came out was history.

This is the resulting image is of the very first frame of my bracket, pretty much straight out of camera. Not the best, not exactly what I had planned but this will go on my wall and will likely remain one of the best memories I have with my camera!