Great North American Eclipse of 2024

1 Year Later

Let me tell you my story of the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse (Edited from my FB post made April 11th, 2024)

I saw my first total solar eclipse in 2017 at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina and I knew the moment it was over that I wanted to see the incredible natural phenomenon again but 2024 seemed so far off so I mostly put it out of my mind.

The Corona as seen during totality during the August 21st, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse

Then in January of 2024 I saw a post from a photographer friend Michael Sheely he had posted about his plans to camp in Oswego to view the eclipse.

The Planning Begins

And the gears started to turn! Time to start planning so down I went into the black hole of the internet. I quickly found out that although the path of totality (where you want to be, more on this later) would pass less than 300 hundred miles from home. Historically speaking, based on weather patterns (you want, no you NEED, clear sky) the best place would be south west Texas near the Mexican border. I actually considered this for a bit but pretty quickly decided against a 4000 mile road trip. Check out the path again bingo the center of totality was going almost directly over Buffalo and Niagara Falls and that’s doable as a day trip. Wouldn’t it be incredible to witness the eclipse over the falls. But the crowds, the crowds will be crazy (in 2017 we were in bumper to bumper traffic for many many hours trying to return home from Greenville) did I really want to deal with traffic like that again. I also found that due to some unique terrain and weather patterns the southern shores of Lake Erie & Lake Ontario had the potential to be a pretty good location.

While still trying to pinpoint exactly where I’d aim for I sent an email to a friend Johnny Larsen I made on my summer 2023 Arctic Cruise to Svalbard who lives near Toronto. I asked if he’d ever photographed an eclipse and would he be interested in getting together for the event. John quickly replied that he and his partner Cathleen Audrey A (who I also met in Svalbard) would be interested, but we needed to find a place to stay. Cathy quickly got on the assignment and found us a nice little cabin on Lake Seneca about 5 miles north of Watkins Glen. I was narrowing down our photo location to somewhere between Rochester & Oswego ( both less than 90 minutes from our cabin). We would pick our exact location the morning of, a plan was coming together!

The Weather Worries

Jump forward to the end of March and I began to check the weather forecasts. One week out and I began to obsessively check the weather forecasts, and it wasn’t looking good. If we were willing to drive a bit more we could expand our range of options from Buffalo to Watertown, so I added those cities to my weather watch. Check the weather, still not looking good.

Just a few of the screen grabs I was taking of the weather forecast as we were getting closer to the 8th.

Saturday Morning I ran a few errands, packed the car and headed to the cabin. Check the weather. I arrived just in time to share, with John & Cathy, a beautiful sunset over the lake as it poked between a small break in the mostly cloudy sky.

A quick selfie of John, Cathy & I as we enjoyed the sunset

A beautiful sunstar as the sun peaks through a small crack in the clouds as it sets on April 6th, 2024

Check the weather. The next day, Sunday morning, and all day was perfectly clear blue skies with not a cloud to be seen. Check the weather. We took a hike, Check the Weather, did a bit of wine tasting, Check the Weather, and had a campfire under a beautiful clear sky. Check the weather and check it again, the forecast hadn’t improved “mostly clear in the morning with clouds after lunch, and then clearing the following night” all the way from Buffalo to Watertown. Anyway not feeling real confident but after a bit of discussion we made a plan to head towards Oswego the next morning.

The Day Arrives

I woke early on Monday morning and before even getting out of bed I Checked the Weather. The forecast hadn’t improved and if I was being honest with myself it was looking worse. Damn It, I was feeling broken and worried that we were going to be skunked by the weather. “Oh well, I might as well get a shower and some coffee”. Sitting enjoying my coffee watching a beautiful clear sunrise and feeling down, John asked if we should reconsider our plan? Check the weather, Vermont and Maine looked like the best choice but it just didn’t seem like we would be able to make it, so look further South West. Cleveland looked promising also too far, how about Erie? We could make Erie, it was about 3 1/2 hours drive, and looking at the radar forecast for Erie it looked like the worst of the storm would pass by 1, would the clouds clear? Jump over to Astropheric (a great app that goes beyond just a weather forecast and gives hourly predictions of Cloud Cover, Transparency & Seeing Ability. it’s the app you want to look at if you’re thinking of shooting the Milky Way). If we quickly had breakfast and hit the road we should be able to make it to Erie in time for the start of the eclipse. So change of plans, we’d try for Erie!

Erie would be a 3 ½ hour drive but we could make it

On the way to Erie I was back on Astropheric and the midday update showed decent conditions. Now to find a spot I’d have loved to go to Presque Isle but I was worried that arriving around 1 we would have a hard time getting on the peninsula and finding parking. Scanning the Erie store I saw a small town with a small beach about 15 miles from Erie. Freeport Beach in the town of North East, that’s our spot.

We arrived at Halli Reid Park and the sky was clearing

We arrived at about 1:30 and when I hopped out of the car to take a quick look a parking spot opened up, so we grabbed it. As we were unloading the car the sun popped through a small break in the clouds, things were looking up.

We found a spot on the beach and you could see the clouds out over Lake Erie starting to break up. Time to get busy setting up the cameras.

Start taking photos

Around 2 and just as the eclipse started and the clouds cleared and we could see the sun!

Start taking photos, (I was taking 7 shot brackets on both cameras every 5 minutes)

Check my shots and take more photos.

Around 3, although totality wouldn’t start until 3:16, it was getting noticeably darker BUT we could also see clouds out over the lake and coming our way. Take more photos.

Which would arrive first totality or the clouds? Take more

3:10 take more photos and remove the filters, the clouds are getting closer.

3:15 about 90 seconds before totality was to start I started taking shots about every 10 seconds.

3:16 Keep taking photos!

The Main Event

(This next section all took place in the 3 minutes and 42 seconds that we had totality)

There it is the Diamond Ring! Keep taking photos!

Bailey’s Beads! Keep taking photos!

And the corona, WOW it’s Beautiful!!!, tears. (And I mean REAL TEARS running down my cheeks, seeing totality is such an incredibly overwhelming emotional experience).

Keep taking photos!

Time to take a breath and check in with my friends. We had all gotten some shots. We were all emotional and could hardly talk, (If you know you know)! I think we took a selfie but I’m not sure.

All of us feeling pretty good as we had just witnessed Totality of the Great North American Eclipse of 2024

I do remember picking up my binoculars and getting a great view of the corona and several solar prominences (not the same as solar flares but similar, google it if you want more details).

I switched to my 400 and took some handheld shots.

Second Diamond Ring, Taken handheld with the 400.

Move the body back to the lens still mounted on the tripod, Take more photos.

Finally a moment to peak at the back of the camera, oh NOOO my shots are all just solid black! What happened?!?

After loading them to my computer, I think I know what happened. I can see that everything was shot at f /16 and ISO 100. The 7 shot brackets were ( 1/4000, 1/2000, 1/1000, 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60). I checked my first shots on the back of the camera and they looked OK. Those first shots were almost full sun in clear blue skies. But as the level of the light dropped I never took a second look and everything was drastically underexposed.

Lightroom and RAW to the rescue! Thankfully I was shooting in RAW and I could push them up 3 to 5 full stops in lightroom along with a nearly 100% increase in the shadows. Ideally these would have all been exposed closer to f/ 8 and ISO 400 or 800 with the same 7 shot brackets.

1 Year Later

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