The partial solar eclipse was going to put our home under the path of significant sun cover. I was aware it wouldn’t be as dramatic as a total eclipse having experienced both, but I still was keen to see it. I had some ideas of shots that I wanted to take and where to take them from. I was hoping to get away from work a bit early to get home and set up for when it all started. Sadly, my plans went awry.

My afternoon meetings ran long, I got a train an hour later than planned, it left late, it got delayed for a medical emergency at an intermediate station so, but the time I got home, it was about ten minutes until maximum obscuration. All plans were scuppered so, instead, I just grabbed the longest lens and my solar filters and headed outside the house to some open ground. There were a bunch of neighbours there and this was the thing that saved it for me.

I was able to let them use my filters to see what was going on and they really appreciated it. I also just got to talk to them which was really good fun. I did take some images, though. Even these didn’t go so well. Initially I was seeing some internal reflections. I moved the filter closer to the end of the lens and that seemed to address that. However, this was partly caused by my second issue which was overexposure. Everything was washed out and, when I remembered to bring the exposure down, things got a lot better. We were already on the way out of the eclipse at this point. Having said that, a shot of a partial eclipse is a shot of a partial eclipse. It really doesn’t matter how much. Therefore, this shot is a bit meh!