The Great American Eclipse
Why You Should)
Go Find the Shadow
The Great American Eclipse
Preemptive disclaimer: Do not look directly at the sun, or point any magnified optics at the sun without proper filtration. Best case, you might melt the internals of your lens and fry your sensor. Worst case, you’ll spend the rest of your life in perpetual darkness.
What’s the big deal? Why would you want to drive to the shadow when we have 90% coverage right here? These questions came up over and over again when I was preparing my trip to Tennessee for the “Great American Eclipse” of 2017. I didn’t have a good answer at the time, I just wanted to. As a photographer, I feel compelled to capture anything that I find interesting. As a nerd, I elevate rare astronomical phenomena to the top of that list. Now, with just under a year until the next total solar eclipse over US soil, I’m already into my preparations that were started seven years ago. This time, however, I can answer these questions.
On August 21, 2017, I was sitting in my camp chair alongside Sparks Lane in Cades Cove – an area of Great Smoky Mountains National Park known in some photographic circles as a world-class destination for bear, deer, and turkey photos – thinking about the dumb luck and comedy of errors that put me exactly where I wanted to be for that eclipse while lamenting the mostly cloud-covered sky. I wondered if the naysayers were right. My girlfriend and I had been up since five that morning in anticipation of the gates to the Cades Cove loop opening at seven, only to head out of our campsite and find out that the line of cars behind the gate extended the full 24 miles back to Gatlinburg, and for the first time in its history, the National Park Service completely barricaded entry to the largest open-access park in the nation. By six-thirty, the Tennessee Department of Transportation was shutting down access to the exits on Interstate 40, telling people to move along to somewhere else. The ranger giving us updates overheard my girlfriend and I discuss shifting our plans to hike in and asked us to wait. He then directed us to drive up the left lane to the last open spot before the entry gate so that we wouldn’t have to hoof it with all of our gear.
As first contact approached, the clouds began to separate. The weather app on my phone predicted clear skies. Kids played in the nearby creek, and while there were only a dozen cars or so with us along Sparks Lane, we could see the entirety of the loop road packed with cars parked bumper to bumper – far worse than any “bear jam” that road had ever seen. As time passed, changes were subtle – more noticeable on the viewscreen of my SLR equipped with solar film, but the light around us grew steadily dimmer in magnitude. You know that feeling you get when something is wrong but you can’t tell what? I had that feeling, and the best I could figure was seeing hard, direct light that felt more like an overcast day. Then I saw the ground bokeh. Where normally would be dappled light from the sun poking through pinhole gaps between tree leaves, there was a smattering of crescent-shaped projections on the ground. Combined with the continuously growing darkness, it was downright eerie.
“But Buck,” you might ask, “isn’t that the same as we’d see at home?” And you’d be correct. But that’s where the similarities stop. As the moon passed 99% coverage, I was frantically swapping back and forth between looking at the sun through my solar film glasses, and looking at the viewfinder of my camera, my heartbeat rising with anticipation of the “diamond ring,” or Bailey’s Beads if you want to be scientifically accurate about it. I wanted to both live in the moment and capture it. I watched the sliver grow smaller and smaller, until there was practically nothing left. Finally, I felt brave enough to take the solar filter off my telephoto lens and let the raw, unfiltered light straight into a pillar of glass and electronics worth more than three months’ pay. I saw the diamond ring, and it took my breath away. Over the next 30 seconds or so, I watched as Bailey’s Bead’s disappeared one by one behind the irregular lunar surface. What happened next is something I’ll never forget.
Everything went quiet and a cold wind blew across the valley. No birds were singing. Nobody was speaking. As that last single bead of light faded from view, a visible shadow passed over us. The crickets and frogs began singing. Around us, people erupted into cheers. We were now part of the rare lucky few to experience totality. Meanwhile, I was in awe. No, wait. I’ve been in awe before. This was more than that; this was on a spiritual level. I couldn’t help but stare, dumbfounded, at the sun’s corona – the visible interplay between solar winds and the sun’s magnetic field. I had no idea it would be so bright, so cleanly white, or so mesmerizing. I forgot there was an array of cameras in front of me. I was lost in the moment. Then I heard a shutter click, then a few more. People all around me were starting to capture what they saw or pose with each other under the glowing ring in the sky. I turned to my cameras and got to work.
By the time Bailey’s Bead’s began showing up on the other side, I was already making plans in my head for 2024. I dare say that like someone with a narcotic disposition, I was hooked from my first jolt. There have been half a dozen partial eclipses over the continental US and more lunar eclipses than I can count since the turn of the century, and I have laid witness to most of them. But still, I couldn’t recall any specific one by memory. In fact, I had to look up the number for this article to even be sure of the count. Nothing, not even 90%, nor even 99.5% compares to the experience I had in those few moments under the shadow.
As I write this, we’re at just under a year until the next total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Again, through a combination of dumb luck and sheer will, I managed to reserve my first choice of location for this eclipse – not just down to the location, but down to the exact campsite, on a south-facing shoreline of Lake Ouachita, where I’ll have no concerns of traffic. I’ll just simply step out of my tent and be ready to go. I also have a deposit on a hotel under the shadow in Texas as a backup location, and I’ve reached out to friends in Cleveland and Rochester in hopes of reserving a couch as a tertiary backup. I’ll make my final call based on the forecast the week before – the last day I can get my deposit back on the room in Texas. I’ve also begun shaking down my equipment, making sure it’s up to par, and inspecting my filters. I’ve started my shopping list, including more filter elements, a stack of disposable observation glasses to hand out to people that forget theirs, and I’m currently eyeballing and rolling pennies for a hydrogen-alpha etalon (fancy scientific filters to let you see the sun’s actual surface, not the much brighter photosphere below it). Oh, and I’ve already booked a spot near San Antonio for this coming October’s annular eclipse as both a dry run and a new-to-me experience. But I’m not normal and I’m okay with that.
As a resident member of the Virginia Professional Photographer’s Association, you’re likely within a six-to-eight-hour drive to somewhere under the shadow for next year. Expanding that to 12 or 16 hours opens up some potentially premium locations. If you’re one of our out-of-state members, or someone who stumbled into this article by accident, you may be even closer. I highly encourage you – nay, I fully implore you – to do whatever is necessary to find a spot under the shadow come April. But start acting now. Most of the hotels are already booked, or gouging prices. Campgrounds will surely fill next. Perhaps you have friends and family now living under the path of totality that would be happy to host you in exchange for a print or two. Equipment-wise, you don’t need much. A solar filter, tripod, and your favorite telephoto are plenty. Anything beyond that is just a bonus. For the budget-minded, several reputable companies provide sheets of their solar film that you can cut to size and fashion your own slip-over filter. This is the approach that I take. A 300mm kit lens and a 2x teleconverter, or Sigma’s relatively inexpensive 150-600mm lens fills just over half the frame on a crop sensor, and nearly the whole frame once the corona becomes visible. Going as wide as 100mm still provides enough sensor coverage to work with.
From one photographer to another, I highly encourage you, regardless of your usual style or genre of photography, to start working now and beg, borrow, plead, or commit whatever acts necessary to make it under the shadow next April. Perhaps you might even find a client willing to pay your way to have professional portraits under the corona. I assure you, that whatever it takes to secure yourself a spot will be worth it – particularly since the next opportunity won’t be until the year 2044 – and you’ll come home with photos that could only be dreamed of by those who are convinced that 90% is good enough.