Image Spotlight: Lac-Megantic Total Solar Eclipse

The shot that I had envisioned taking for the total solar eclipse included blending time. I was inspired by some day to night photos that I’ve seen and figured the eclipse would be particularly interesting with a sort of day to night to day transition. I wanted to capture it. I had a few cameras set up along the beach of Lac-Megantic, QC. One camera was only needed for 5-10 shots my entire trip. I set it up with a foreground I liked and manually triggered it a few times during the event when I felt like the light had changed enough. 

My other camera was set up on a star tracker to capture more close up photos of the event. This is where I goofed. At least as far as photography is concerned. I was busy watching the eclipse (no regrets) and didn’t remove my solar filter until 30 seconds into totality, missing the first diamond ring. Where I was, totality only lasted 3 minutes and 28 seconds. I quickly stopped down my shutter speed and didn’t touch the camera again until putting the filter back on after the next diamond ring. 

Despite having gone there largely to photograph it, I didn’t spend much time tending to my cameras during the event. Still, I was able to walk away with something close to what I had envisioned. 

I say close because I have never seen an image that truly captures the experience of standing in the shadow of the moon during totality. Including my own. 

This photo includes 5 foreground photos that I blended to show changing light conditions during the event. Then I superimposed an image of totality from my other camera. 

The change in light was sudden and dramatic, but it was not as dark as I was expecting. The sky was brighter than on a full moon night and had a similar sort of shimmer to it. 

Many of the wide angle photos I see fail to give totality the presence it deserves. This is a limitation of wide angle lenses that tend to understate the size of far away objects making them appear much smaller than they are. If you can imagine how large a supermoon is in the sky, you know how large it was. A pitch black circle in the sky surrounded by glowing woven threads of light. 

There is truly nothing else like it.