It's a once-in-a-lifetime shot. And I got it.
Photographing a Total Solar Eclipse is an absolutely surreal experience; one that I got to relive as I edited the photos. And even now as I write this. It was something I would have loved for my father to witness. If you've read any bit of my blog, you would know that he, too, was a photographer. And I couldn’t help but think of him as I watched the moon slowly cut across the sun’s path. I don’t use his photography gear much nowadays, but I was using his tripod for my second camera. This would have been a spiritual experience for me and my dad if we had seen it together, I think. I’m not much of a spiritual person, but it was as close to spiritual as I’ve ever been.
Planning for this event was inspiring. I watched countless YouTube videos of photographers who had achieved the goal in 2017 and wanted to teach others to do it now, in 2024. Thank god for those photographers. We don’t gatekeep in this house! One particular quote comes to mind of a gentleman saying “yeah, you’ll hear the word ‘wow’ a lot.” He was right. Except it was mostly coming from me. I also said “this is so f*cking cool!!!” a lot. I didn’t even realize until I looked back at the video!
A lot of those tutorials also told me that I had to practice what I was going to do beforehand. Okay, sure, no problem. Just have to wait for the sun to come out once I get my solar filter in the mail! … Yeah… That didn’t happen. I live in Newfoundland. It was overcast the entire time leading up to the eclipse. And when it wasn’t overcast, I either didn’t have my camera gear on me, or I was stuck at work. So I went into this entire thing blind… Yay!
And, boy, I was nervous! I was putting a lot of pressure on this - on myself!
I wanted so badly to get this right. So, let me tell you how everything almost went wrong.
The Planning
I live on the Avalon peninsula of Newfoundland. If you look at the line of totality for this eclipse, pictured below, the Avalon peninsula was at 99% coverage of the eclipse. Not 100%. Not totality. Not good enough for me. So I knew that I had to have a road trip of some kind in my planning. So I followed the map to understand what was the most scenic part of the province that also had the longest duration of totality. Result? The lovely Bonavista peninsula. I had every single thing planned down to the second. I may not have practiced, but I knew exactly what I was doing. I downloaded The Photographer’s Ephemeris and was able to figure out where in the sky the sun and moon would be, where they would cross paths, and how soon after we would have golden hour. Based on my experience shooting the Bonavista Lighthouse, I wanted to be there. I would get there early and pin point exactly where I wanted to be and set up shop for my few hours.
Now that you know how detail oriented I am, let me tell you how poorly I suck at reading weather maps. Spoiler: I have a guy for that. I never look at the forecast. I just assume it’s overcast everyday. And most of the time, I’m right. Again, I live in Newfoundland!
So the day comes, and NTV’s good ol’ Chief Meteorologist Eddie Sheerr, is telling us that the weather’s a touch cold but a great day! Besides, you know, the CLOUDS. Objectively a beautiful day across the whole island! Solar Eclipse wise? It was shit. I was going to be so upset if I didn’t get this. Now here comes the part where we become eclipse chasers but more stressed and urgent… like tornado chasers.
The Adventure
I had everything packed the day before, hell, I’m pretty sure I had it packed two days before. But before I even leave my bed the morning of, I’m checking socials to see what the weather is going to be. For, of course, I knew the day before that the overcast skies were once again going to rain on my parade. But what I didn’t know was where exactly the clouds were going to be.
I got picked up at 9am. Sharp. I don’t even think I said good morning, I think I just went right into “Bonavista is off the table.” That’s right. Bonavista was completely covered in clouds.
Plan A? Out the window. Before I even had a window to throw it out of!
Honestly, thank goodness I wasn’t the one driving in this situation. I was on my phone for most of the drive, constantly checking and cross checking and double checking the cloud cover. Don’t recommend that for the people like me who get car sick while reading!
So we drive to Whitbourne. We were meeting a friend who lived out that way. And the three of us set out to Clarenville where we would have lunch and check again on the weather.
To nobody’s surprise, the Tim Horton’s in Clarenville, just off the highway, was packed with fellow eclipse chasers. We saw couples with laptops and phones with weather maps and speaking in hushed, passionate voices. Where was the best chance to see the eclipse?
It felt really cool. You don’t often get to experience something like that - where everyone around you is in the same mindset, with the same goal, wanting the same thing. And yet, none of you discuss it. It just… is. It felt like a community but one that wouldn’t reconnect again. We certainly weren’t going to see another eclipse in Newfoundland in this lifetime. You could feel that in the air - the “once in a lifetime” event happening in that Tim Horton’s.
One couple did speak to us once they heard us say “Bonavista is off the table. And I don’t want to go to Gander. It’ll be too crowded.” They flew to Newfoundland for this. They were from the UK if I recall correctly. Imagine flying to the cloudiest place in Canada (I’m deeming Newfoundland that) for a once-in-a-lifetime sky-based event, only for it to be clouded over!! That happened. But when we left Tim’s, we wished each other good luck. I hope they got to see it.
We settled on Gambo for all of… 30 minutes. It was too cloudy, and although it called to clear up in patches, I didn’t want to risk it.
So we settled on Grand Falls-Windsor. It would mean we watch totality for half the time as Bonavista, but it was calling for partly cloudy skies. And that’s the best we had seen all day. We would get there just barely in the knick of time and it would be a long drive home that night but something we just had to do.
A friend messaged me and told me he had clear skies on the side of the road just before GFW but where’s the fun in that? Where’s the composition in that? The moment I knew we were going to GFW, I had the perfect spot in mind and the perfect composition as well.
Just off the side of a trail overlooking Bishop’s Falls. My friend would get a great timelapse composition, and I would get everything I wanted. Even if it was for 1 minute and change.
And as expected, we got there just in time! I put on my glasses and it had just begun. And weirdly enough, it immediately got cold! Thank goodness we were prepared for that. We set up our cameras, and waited for totality.
And boy oh boy when it finally hit. I’ll have to attach a video because it was so surreal! Feel free to laugh at how incredibly poorly I framed this video. Like what was I thinking? And excuse the swearing but I imagine you’d be saying the exact same thing!
This is something I am going to remember for the rest of my life.
I still struggle to find the words of how awe-inspiring it all was. I have to give props to the people I went with. They knew I had a plan, they knew I was confident in my plan - despite it constantly changing, and they rolled with whatever ideas I threw at them. One of them asked me when the next one was and we're planning our trip to Iceland (or Spain) in 2026!
I don't think I'll go into the editing details in this particular blog post but that's just because it was the easiest thing I've ever done, having as much Photoshop experience as I do.
Stay tuned for my next total solar eclipse photos. They're going to be even better (now that I really know what I'm doing)!
