#43: Reflections Of A Total Solar Eclipse ☀️🌑🌎

3.5 Minutes in Totality

Totality was one of the most awesome moments of my life, in the truest sense of the word.

I felt pure awe 🤯

Monday was also perhaps the highlight of my astrophotography career so far 😌

In my last entry, I mentioned that I was worried about being clouded-out for the event. This is an astrophotography term that means what it sounds like: clouds prevent the ability to shoot photos.

While there were many, many clouds on the day of totality… the storms began to clear and I was able to shoot through them.

So I did 👀

Recalibrating Recap

Welcome to Recalibrating! My name is Callum (@_wanderloots)

Join me each week as I learn to better life in every way possible, reflecting and recalibrating along the way to keep from getting too lost.

Thanks for sharing the journey with me ✨

Last week was a shorter entry, explaining my plans for shooting the total solar eclipse and how you could safely view it yourself (if you were lucky enough to be in the Path of Totality).

I was worried that I would be clouded-out, but I wasn't 😌

This week, I'm going to keep the writing short and the photos long.

There are, at the same time, too many and too few words to explain my experience of the Total Solar Eclipse.

A picture is worth 1000 words, right?

Maybe that will help ✨

Update: I also launched my first free mint on Zora (more on that below ✨) and my first onchain podcast episode of Recalibrating. Both of these are available to collect for free (note: "free" still means paying the ~$2 protocol/gas fee, it's blockchain after all). They also have over 100 collections each 🤯

A Moment Of Reflection

I've been struggling to edit the eclipse photos all week, struggling to put the experience into words.

Some things in life are just ineffable 🤷‍♂️

I've come to realize that part of the reason I've struggled to edit the photos is because the unedited photos (RAWs) themselves are so incredibly beautiful to me.

There's something elegant, in my opinion, about the raw data that is picked up from the camera sensors.

It's a pure form of the experience.

That said, I of course love editing, turning the raw moments into differently styled works of art.

But I think I'm still in the animation phase of playing with the raw data 😌 and that's okay.

I'm having fun creating breathing guides (more on this below) and finding ways to convert the Awe I felt in that moment into something that can be experienced by anyone, anywhere in the world ✨

If I were to try and add words to this experience, I would say this:

The timer counted down.

🎙️ 60 Seconds Until Totality

My Solar Eclipse Timer announced that there was 60 seconds remaining (an app on my phone to perfectly track the eclipse timing based on my GPS).

I quickly modified the settings of my camera, removing the solar filter from my lens to let in the light of the sun refracting and diffracting at the edge of the moon.

In a moment of panic, I realized I had forgotten to reduce my timelapse interval to as short as possible, trying to capture the full dynamic range of the moon totally eclipsing the sun in a few, brief seconds.

The light began to get weird. Darkening, spreading.

Shadows distorted, twisting and flickering in the loss of light.

🎙️ 10 Seconds Until Totality

After frantically changing my camera settings to account for the most rapidly changing light I've experienced in my life, I looked up just in time to watch the moon quench the sun, drenching the world in darkness.

A Moment Before Totality

Colour raced across the horizon as the refracting and diffracting light caused a sunset effect all around me, for the areas of the world that were at the edge of totality, but not in it.

I was not at the edge.

I was in Totality.

Totality

Despite the clouds, the moon shone brightly through the darkened sky, accompanied by the stars that had deigned to visit during the momentary night caused by the moon's black shadow, cast upon the Earth.

But the light was strange. Ethereal.

Like a black hole had opened in the sky, edged by the remaining light of the sun.

A portal of darkness.

A Moment Of Totality

I took a moment to comprehend what was happening.

I realized that the moon was being backlit by the sun, an effect I had never seen before. Rays of light cast shadows from the edge of the moon.

But even more impressively, I was able to experience another first in my life: the corona.

The sun is WAY bigger than you think.

Most of this light is invisible to us, lost in the overall brightness of the brightest object in our skies.

But during a total solar eclipse, only then, the rest of the sun becomes visible.

To capture the full range, I needed to try and shoot from 1/8000 seconds to 4 seconds.

🎙️ MAXIMUM TOTALITY

With 1.75 minutes remaining, I switched my camera settings again to try and expose the surface of the moon.

Brighter. More corona. More Earthshine

With the rest of the world outside of totality, there was quite a lot of sunlight that was reflecting off of the surface of the Earth. I wanted to capture that light illuminating the dark side of the moon (our normal side of the moon that was now backlit by the sun and frontlit by Earthshine).

With the clouds, I knew it was unlikely to pick up the detail of the moon (since the motion blur & clouds distorts it), but it was worth a shot. Or 100 😂

I also used this as another opportunity to just look up, experience what was happening.

Maximum totality was surreal. That's the only way to put it.

The birds were flying back to their nests, thinking that it was night time. People were freaking out, crying, laughing, shouting. Experiencing true Awe.

It was a beautiful sight.

Then I noticed: there was a dark pink object on the edge of the sun.

The prominences were visible with my naked eyes 🤯

A prominence is like a solar flare that loops back to the sun, caught up in magnetic fields. The sun ejects raw plasma and then catches it again.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

Prominence

🎙️ 30 Seconds Of Totality Remaining

I flipped my camera settings back down, darker, knowing that the sun was about to reveal itself again, ending totality.

There was a flash!

A Moment After Totality

The sun was back, the moon moving just beyond its centre.

Filters and glasses back on.

It was time to take in the rest of the event.

The moon saying goodbye to the sun.

Breathing The Moment To Life

I decided to animate the final shots of totality to illustrate the level of cloud cover I was shooting through.

I hope this animation can be a reminder to anyone doubting whether it's "worth it" to go out and experience a moment.

There was a high likelihood of clouds for many people during the total solar eclipse. Many people thought this meant it wasn't worth it to try.

The thing is, you will never actually be able to know ahead of time 🤷‍♂️

The most awesome moments in life cannot be fully predicted. The only way you will ever know, is to try.

I also turned the animation into a breathing guide to reduce anxiety and increase mindfulness:

✨ 6 seconds inhale
✨ 6 seconds exhale
✨ 5 breaths per minute (bpm)

repeat until relaxed 😌 (usually 10 breaths)

Try it ✨

Fun Fact: This animation was also minted on blockchain on the actual day of the Eclipse ☀️ 🌑 🌎

You can view it in high resolution or collect it here (Zora now accepts both crypto and credit cards).

Afterwards

I still haven't fully processed the eclipse (both mentally and data-wise haha), but suffice to say, it was one of the coolest moments of my life.

I look at the world differently now.

At 30 years of age, I've now seen as much of the sun as I will ever see in my life.

It's a humbling thought, one that deepens the more I ponder it.

I will continue reflecting on this event for a long time.

Thanks for sharing the experience with me through my words, photos, and animation ✨

P.S. By the time you read this, I may have another animation out 👀

You'll be able to view it as part of my 2024 Solar Eclipse collection, created on the day of the Eclipse ✨

Next week

To be honest, these last few weeks have been hectic. Inspiring, awesome, incredible, yes, but also hectic.

I look forward to taking time this week to recalibrate my mindfulness more, something that has been slipping while away and busy with eclipse preparation.

I will be sharing more of my mindfulness experiences in my mindfulness channel on farcaster.

Feel free to join and chime in ✨

I will also be sharing more eclipse photos and animations, including some collaborations 👀

Stay tuned ✨

P.S.

I learned the lesson of shooting through clouds when I captured my second lunar eclipse entirely through cloud cover.