Solar Eclipse Photography

There was only ever going to be one chance for these photos.

I had waited my entire life to see a total solar eclipse. And the Great North American Eclipse of April 8, 2024 was quite literally my only chance to see one near my home – the next total solar eclipse in the vicinity of Montreal will be in 2079.

While Montreal would see about one minute of totality during the eclipse, I wanted more. The path of the Moon’s shadow would pass through Quebec in the Eastern Townships, so we selected the town of Bromont. At that location, the entire eclipse would start at 14:15 in the afternoon and finish at 16:37, local time. And in the middle, we would have an incredible 3m15s of totality.

I used two cameras to photograph the eclipse.

• The first camera was fixed on a tripod with a wide-angle 12mm lens, set to take a photo automatically every five minutes for the duration of the event. I framed the shot to include a nearby gazebo for content.
• The second camera had a 400mm zoom lens for close-ups of the sun. I would manually reframe each shot and take shots at roughly the same cadence as the camera on the timer.

Both camera lenses were covered with solar-safe photo filters.

The minutes leading up to totality were extraordinary. As Hank Green put it, each of us is familiar with the sky, in all its moods and times of day. But when the sky suddenly does something you’ve never seen before, it is a deeply felt and unsettling experience. I fully understand the reaction of ancient peoples to the bizarre sight of the land darkening at midday and the sun simply vanishing from the sky,

During those few minutes of totality, I had to remind myself to stop taking pictures and just enjoy the event. I had never taken a picture of such an object, and I was uncertain of the correct exposure to capture the details of totality. But after a minute of frantic shooting, I had to let go of the camera and simply marvel at how the world had changed around me.