The eclipse lasted about 90 seconds. The experience of photographing it lasted far longer.
I can say with confidence that if you’ve seen one eclipse, you have not seen them all. I was in Spain this month to witness my second total solar eclipse. I’ve also photographed two annular solar eclipses, a type where the sun appears as a ring of fire. I’ve lost count of the partial solar eclipses and lunar eclipses of various types.
I got into nature photography to better experience the world around me, and there’s nothing like an eclipse to make you feel small.
At the time of peak eclipse, the sun was 94,213,200 miles from Earth and the moon was perfectly in line between the two. If you were to use my height as a unit of measure, you could fit 90.4 billion of me between here and there. That’s not the part of this that impressed me.
Given the distances involved, the alignment that makes the eclipse possible exists for just a fleeting moment of time. That’s perhaps best illustrated by the fact that to even see this eclipse, you had to be in a narrow slice of one of three countries, a slice that at its most expansive point was a mere 174,000 Kevins wide.
The point is to show that the eclipse isn’t a singular moment to see the sun blocked by the moon. It’s an opportunity to experience the relative motion of objects billions of times larger than we are. You can actually feel that movement, minute by minute.
You wouldn’t know the moon started to eclipse the sun unless you were looking at it through your protective glasses. The sun is so bright that it’s literally blinding until its entire disk is blocked.
While I could see the moon moving against the sun’s face, it wasn’t until it was half blocked that I noticed daylight fading. Some birds flew by, presumably to roost.
Just a half hour after the sun’s disk was completely blocked by the moon, a phase known as totality. Cheers erupted from the crowd with me at the edge of Badia dels Alfacs, a large bay on the east coast of Spain. It now looked like dusk.
The corona, which is too faint to see except during a total eclipse, was now readily visible. I had time for a few quick photos before filaments of plasma that extend millions of miles into space would vanish again.
I focused first on capturing the eclipse with the landscape below. I knew thousands of other photographers would be capturing close-ups of the sun, and I wanted to create something that was unique to my experience. Once I was sure I had an image I liked, I had time to snap a few close-ups as well.
There were months of planning behind the picture. Before I had booked anything, I sat down with topographical maps and historical weather data to find a combination of interesting landscape and likely clear skies. A bay and a lagoon in Ebro Delta Natural Park seemed most promising to me and I did the math to make sure the nearly setting sun would be high enough in the sky to clear the coastal mountains. I picked the bay because it was harder to get to and I thought it therefore might be easier for me to access given the expected crowds.
But plans can also change. As the sun emerged from totality, briefly creating what’s known as the diamond-ring effect, color warm colors began to return to the sky. I had planned for the peak of the eclipse to be my picture. I thought the scene before me was even more striking and I worked quickly to frame an image that included the full landscape with the sun. I also incorporated one of the clouds that had caused me so much anxiety over the past hour. I was worried it would cover the sun and ruin my picture.
I continued to watch the sun reappear from behind the moon. It set before it completely emerged. Once again, the color began to drain from the sky.
(Kevin’s book, Five Minutes in Nature, collects images and stories about his experiences in the wilderness, curated to help you have deeper encounters of your own. Preview and order it here. Prints of his images are available through LivingWilderness.com. Learn about new work by joining his mailing list.)
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