Eclipse #1
Total eclipse of the sun, 12 August, late afternoon until sunset
The total eclipse of the sun was a big event with many photographers descending on northern Spain to catch it. We were on a trip organized by Photopills, with 12 photographers and 2 leaders. On eclipse day, the leaders had to keep changing our target shooting spot as the cloud cover increased by the coast. We ended up going inland, south of Santander. Our location, a roadside pull-off beside a highway, overlooked fields of sunflowers in full blossom. So we found the farm road that could take us beside the flowers and we had the perfect viewing spot.
This composite shows the evolution of the colors as the sun set after totality. Thank you to Marco Grassi for the Photoshop script!
The eclipse was almost done at sunset.
Eclipse #2
Almost total eclipse of the moon, 28 August, in the pre-dawn hours over Lisboa
Here’s a row of eclipse shots, but now it’s the moon on Aug 28. The ta-ta-ta-ta technique served well after I settled on a base exposure. Max coverage was at 5:13am. The eclipse was over 90% total in Lisboa and visible from our front window.
This next photo is a closeup around 4:30am. It’s a combination of several photos taken at different shutter speeds for different exposures. The camera handles the changing shutter speeds automatically so all the photos are taken during the same minute.
I spent some time editing this moon, trying to blend several exposures to reduce the blown out crescent. The blend was hard to do because the terminator line moved with the different exposures. I like this result though.
The moon was too high for a landscape shot until later when the moon was setting between two of the Norfolk pines outside my window.
Photo to come