Total Solar Eclipse
April 8, 2024
Remember your experience, and enjoy it through my photography!
Scroll through my complete eclipse experience, and read the stories behind the final images I created.
My solar eclipse experience was amazing. The weather looked dodgy at best up until the day of. So cloudy and rainy leading up to the event, and cloudy and rainy again the days after. By some weather fluke of nature, we surprisingly had clear skies on eclipse day.
It was my first real Total Solar Eclipse experience. My first attempt at photographing, and immersing myself in the whole event.
Total Solar Eclipse Spiral
Don't get dizzy!
This is roughly 1/3 of the photos I took during the eclipse. You might say I got a little trigger happy at times. It's such a fun and interesting event, it's hard to be restrained, and I'm glad I wasn't, because look at this spiral of eclipse fun from beginning to end.
I like the variation in exposures to get some brighter and some darker partial phases, the bright white spots of totality, and the darker ones with solar prominences.
This image is a 20x20 inch square.
Video of snapshots from our time watching the eclipse and a quick look at all my images.
I did so much research on how to photograph it, where in the path of totality I was amazingly living, when exactly I was going to experience different phases of the eclipse, and how to make it fun for my family.
The thing about how to photograph it, is there is tons of information and it doesn’t all match up. There is as much advice as there are people giving it- basically if you think maybe something is correct, if you look enough you can find someone disagreeing as often as you can find someone agreeing with you. This makes final decisions still on you as the photographer, but isn’t that always the way when it comes down to it?
After the planning, and the amazing experience of the total eclipse with family, it was time to see what photos I got, and put them together into my eclipse images. That’s the fun part for me as an artist!
Behind the scenes video of making a bookmark.
Time for the eclipse? This design reminds me of a clock.
Final bookmark designs.
Baily’s Beads and the Diamond Ring effects that happen the very fast moments before and after totality. Such a fast and quickly changing light show to the “black hole” of totality.
A stylized S-curve. One of my favorite kinds of images is figuring out how to make a rectangular piece of art out of a circular subject.
Moment of totality, 2 minutes of quiet awe inspiring dimness encompassing the entire environment.
Corona Burst Eclipse Pano
I knew I wanted to make a large panoramic image of my eclipse experience, but it took a process to figure out how I wanted to present it. Do I randomize the partial phases and include all of the totality phases? Do I make some phases look larger than others? I had so many images to comb through and determine if I liked different exposures better for different phases or reasons.
I decided I wanted Totality in the middle and the partial phases stretching out from there, a common look for eclipse compositions, but I think it's classic for a reason, it's pleasant and easy to comprehend.
Because the Corona itself stretches out so far in its starburst shape, I decided also I wanted to make 2 different compositions so no parts of Totality out shined the others so to speak.
I was able to capture some small Baily's Beads before the moment of totality, and other more dominant ones after along with the Diamond Ring effect after as well, so I incorporated all those effects into the Totality middle section of the other panorama.
Then to determine before and after partial sun phases and exposures to include for those. I decided I didn't want the partial phases on one side to be exactly the same size on the other side because I think it's easier to tell they weren't just copies of each other flipped, but in fact each their own images. They feel more authentic to me in this way.
I also wanted the Corona to be the brightest part of that image, so I started the more full Sun parts with darker exposures, and chose lighter ones as the Sun got smaller until the bursting white Corona in the middle. In this image it's also easier to see the Sun Spots that were active during the eclipse.
With the exception of the Beads and Diamond themselves, those Totality images are rather dark, so I thought it would be fun, and visually interesting, to start the larger partial phases with brighter exposures and get darker as they went into the center for the second panorama. That way the darker sliver Sun images also don't distract from or steal attention from the interest in the Totality phases either. I also wanted the sides to be slightly different, once again staying unique and feel more like real life.
I also like the visual of the clouds in the smaller middle sizes of the Sun as it is coming back out from behind the Moon. A visual representation that there were a few high clouds in the sky for part of the event.
The last difference I want to mention is the number of partial sun phases in each panoramic image is different, with 5 on each side of Totality in the Corona pano, and only 4 on each side in the Beads/Diamond pano. This is because the visual of the different bead type effects physically takes up more room, and I didn't want these panoramics to have to be too skinny, I wanted some height to them. The farther you stretch a pano, the skinnier it has to get to keep the proportions correct.
Beads and Ring Eclipse Pano
These panoramic images are 10x30 inches.
One of my favorite parts of watching the total eclipse with my family in our backyard, was how much my daughter enjoyed it too. I was expecting her to be in and out of the house through the whole thing, but she was pretty much outside the whole time enjoying it! Experiencing the temperature drop, shadows, and reflections. It was so cool, and super fun to hear the neighbors enjoying the whole experience as well!
Eclipse Totality
The main purpose people seek out total solar eclipses. Totality and the black hole sun looking corona burst that goes with it. A starburst display from Earth's own personal star.
It is the reason the eclipse that just happened April 8th of this year has been on my calendar since the partial eclipse I could have seen in 2017 with my family was clouded out. We put our glasses on and went outside anyway, for the fun, but as soon as we came back inside I looked up the next eclipse and put it on my calendar. The best part was we were living in the path of totality for this one!
We had my sister and her family join us for back yard eclipse fun, and it turned out amazing!
This image is a 12x12 inch square.
Baily’s Beads at Totality
This is one of my favorite eclipse photos of the whole day! It was my biggest goal as photographing my first total solar eclipse to catch the Baily's Beads I didn't even learn about until researching how to photograph the event. I really wanted to capture this fleeting effect. When I saw this image while looking through my photos, I was super ecstatic that I not only fulfilled that goal, but wow, there is amazing light diffraction flaring around those Beads from the lens. So cool!
The Corona is glowing, and the Solar Prominences are easily visible. Sort of a best of all worlds kind of image. And this is what it looked like in my camera.
This image is a 12x12 inch square.
S-Curve with Totality Cross
To contrast the large panoramic images, I also wanted to showcase all the different phases of totality in one image, and have a whole eclipse experience look within a more rectangular shape. A shape we are more used to seeing when consuming and enjoying art.
This is actually the last Eclipse composite I created. I kept coming up with circular designs, which I suppose makes sense given the round shape of the Sun. I love the square look of those images, but I wanted the whole time to create a more rectangular design for a more traditional size of frame.
There is a natural curved look that happens when flipping through the photos of the Sun getting smaller and then larger again. I embellished it, and added the linear length of time passing, and came up with this gentle s-curve centered around the Sun's Corona bursting in the middle as it happens during Totality when the Sun is lined up perfectly with the Moon.
There are so many effects that happen so quickly in the seconds before and after Totality of the Eclipse that I wanted to showcase those as well. They are each unique and so beautifully fleeting. While considering how to incorporate those effects, I thought about my panoramas, but didn't want to create multiple rectangular designs. I wanted one image that fit nicely in a rectangular frame with interest throughout. One image to simply show you the best parts of the Total Eclipse experience. That is when I noticed the almost cursive x like nature of my composition, it just needed a cross line.
I selected my favorite image of all the special Eclipse effects I captured, the Diamond Ring, Baily's Beads before and after Totality, and the Solar Prominences that graced our eyes that day. They give one cross section of the image interest, while the orange fading and growing Sun do the same for the other side.
I have spent hours looking through this image in awe and wonderment. I could spend hours more, and I invite you to do the same. I like that the Corona and Diamond Ring announce themselves proudly, they almost punch you in the face, the partial phases of the Sun gracefully flow your vision through the event, the Baily's Beads invite you to look closer, and the Solar Prominences demand you give them more attention by being so subtle.
This image is 16x20 inches.
Time for the Eclipse
Do you see what I did there? This image reminds me of a clock. The time passing as the Eclipse progressed is represented by a circle beginning and ending with the full sun at the bottom, in the 6 o'clock position. All around the Corona and a large view of the Solar Prominences during Totality. The top of the image from left to right shows the Sun giving way to Baily's Beads just before Totality, the Diamond Ring and finally Baily's Beads again just after Totality and a sliver of the Sun as it begins to return from behind the Moon. You can see we had a few high clouds move across the eclipse as the Sun was emerging again as well.
Another way this image really comes full circle is that there are 10 images before Totality, as well as 10 after Totality. With the 2 images during Totality being centered in the image. This representation feels like the whole package to me. It shows you all of the phases in one shot each. Which means it can be printed smaller and not feel overly busy.
Please take some time and enjoy this total solar eclipse.
This image is a 12x12 inch square.
Eclipse Totality Wormhole
If you could teleport anywhere, where would it be?
This image reminds me of a wormhole, because I'm a big Sci-Fi geek. It's also akin to Rainbow Road in Mario Kart. Either way, it makes me think of what ifs, like what if we could teleport anywhere for a weekend?
My husband said he'd love to go to Bora Bora and stay in a glass floor hut over the water. I didn't even know that was a thing, but wow they look amazing.
I'd love to teleport somewhere quiet with great clear, dark skies this weekend, it's new moon weekend, and I could really use the Star Therapy. So I think since the New Moon is this weekend, and that's an important factor in my fantasy, Bora Bora can be next weekend.
Coming back to reality now, this image was so fun to make; I was really watching the wormhole grow before my eyes, with walls like a Slinky, as I created it. I had to determine how many rings I should use, too many made it look too busy and blew out the details of the individual rings, but too few didn't get the tunnel look I was envisioning and trying to achieve. I settled on a few of each before and after Totality Phase effect.
I also had to decide how wavy I wanted the tunnel to end up, how Slinky-like I could make it look. I experimented with a more soundwave look, but again the details of each ring were getting distorted and blown-out. So I ended up with the look before you, definitely a tunnel, but simple and made of obvious separate Eclipse images. Finally, I love that the Solar Prominences flow through the whole image. The Eclipse is changing so rapidly, but the Sun is bursting in those few spots for the duration.
This image is a 12x12 inch square.
Baily’s Beads and Corona Mash-up
I did not initially think I was going to create this mash-up image. Here's the story of how and why I ended up creating it.
My husband said it would be cool to see the Baily's Beads and Corona from the eclipse on the same Sun. Sometimes that's all it takes for me to get curious and see if I can accomplish his vision.
For a few days I tried putting these 2 effects together in different ways, never fully knowing what he meant. It wasn't until I sat him down for the 3rd time and told him I don't understand what you mean, please explain it again. He told me his idea again, stack them on the same Sun, and finally the lightbulb clicked.
I created this Baily's Beads and Corona Mashup, and it took a lot of versions to get it right. At first the corona blew out the beads and the prominence so you couldn't see them at all. Then the corona looked almost grey so the other effects could come through. The prominence lost all its warm red color, and the beads didn't shine the right way.
I did as well as I could lining up the images, but for quite a while there was almost a ghost line around the outside of the sun. A fuzziness that really bugged my husband, so I kept tweaking it and reworking it until I landed on this. A happy medium of being able to see all the effects, but maybe none of them are 100% perfect.
I think my husband was right, it IS cool to see the Baily's Beads and Corona effects on the same Sun, while the solar prominence stays visible too.
This image is a 12x12 inch square.
Solar Prominence
The Solar Prominences were such a huge part of the special uniqueness of the April 8th Total Solar Eclipse, that I wanted to really showcase them in a photo all their own. The corona is just a glow around the moon so the red color of the prominences can come through on the image.
The 360 degree sunset horizon was another cool feature of eclipse totality. I was told that during the 2017 eclipse it got even darker, more like night, than this one. I think that is because the sun is near max activity right now, which gives us these prominences, but also more total light to the darkness of totality. Would you agree? The sun was near minimum activity in 2017, so I think the flares and light they bring were absent then… The thinks we ponder when having rare and unique experiences. Even with millions of other people living the same experience, for years before and years to come, it feels so personally special at the same time.
This image is a 12x12 inch square.
Circle Totality Phases
The story on this image is a funny one. It's one of the images I made trying to satisfy my husband's curiosity of Baily's Beads and Corona on one Sun. I had no idea what he meant at this point, and when I showed him this result, he said, "That is crazy!" It was not his mash-up vision at all!
This one really reminds me of a portal or a vortex or a dart board with the full sun bullseye in the middle. It might be fun to mount on cork board and use for a dart board? I don't know, I have mixed feelings about throwing things at my art.
I like how the Corona bursting around the outside can be flowing off the image, and it still looks cool. A good way to really fill the frame with Eclipse Totality effects.
This image is a 12x12 inch square.