On October 14, 2023, millions of people were able to experience a rare “Ring of Fire” annular solar eclipse that crossed over the western United States, from Oregon to Texas. The path crossed over many amazing national parks, national monuments, and wilderness areas in the southwest, offering endless possibilities for scenic places to view the eclipse. One of the biggest challenges for making a landscape image of this annular eclipse was that it occurred late in the morning and high in the sky at an elevation of 30 degrees or more above the horizon. As a result, most landscape images of this eclipse required the use of a wide-angle lens. An annular eclipse that is high in the sky is also very bright and requires a very dark solar filter in order to view or photograph it. Wide angle images showing both the landscape and the eclipse will be a composite that blends an unfiltered landscape image with images of the eclipse taken through a solar filter.
Planning for the Shot
When I heard the path of totality for the 2023 annular solar eclipse would pass over the NW corner of New Mexico, I was immediately energized and started to visualize several possible eclipse images. As I was already planning a visit to family in Albuquerque, I decided to focus on the badlands in the San Juan Basin south of Farmington, NM. I decided early into my creative process that I would make an “artistic impression” of the eclipse over a distinctive rock formation featured prominently in the foreground. My first thought was a composite image of the eclipse over the Alien Throne (in the Ah Sli She Pah Wilderness), and the second was a composite image of the eclipse over the Egg Hatchery, or “Cracked Eggs” in the Bisti Badlands (also known as the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness). As eclipses are a wonder of our cosmos, I wanted to shoot a landscape that evoked a sense of being on an alien planet.
Having never hiked to the Alien Throne before, I made a scouting trip there the day before the eclipse. I was surprised by how many photographers were already camped out there waiting for the eclipse, including a photo workshop group led by Marc Muench. I took some foreground shots of the Alien Throne for later use in a possible composite image, and decided to instead make the Egg Hatchery at Bisti my shooting location for the eclipse. During my research into possible locations, I had checked how the annular eclipse would appear over the cracked eggs, and it lined up perfectly for making a composite landscape image. The Photographers Ephemeris (TPE) screenshot from my iphone below shows the alignment of the cracked eggs, the badland hills in the background, with the the eclipse occurring behind the hills. The hills rise up approximately 9 degrees from the horizon, while the annular phase of the eclipse would be at an azimuth of 135 degrees on the horizon and an elevation of 34.5 degrees in the sky.
Capturing and Processing the Individual Shots for the Composite Image
On the morning of the eclipse, there were many, many people at the Bisti Badlands parking area. To my surprise, however, after hiking 45 minutes to the cracked eggs, there were no photographers there. I had my pick of any foreground I wanted, and I chose two of my favorite “eggs” to anchor a composition. My excitement grew as I realized I had a chance to make a unique image of this annular eclipse! I quickly set up two tripods, one with a camera and wide-angle lens (for shooting an unfiltered foreground image), and the other with a second camera and a telephoto lens (for shooting close ups of the eclipse).
With the sun about two thirds behind the moon, I shot an unfiltered image of the eclipse over the landscape with a 15-35 mm wide angle lens (f16, 1/200 sec, ISO 100). This would be used as the foreground and sky for the composite image. A focal length of 18 mm allowed me to create a composition that included two distinctive cracked eggs, long shadows in the foreground, badland hills in the background, and the eclipse in the top third of the frame. The positioning of the camera and the wide-angle lens exaggerated the length of the shadows, which created some nice leading lines into the scene. I also intentionally reduced the exposure of the scene in processing to simulate (and exaggerate) the slight dimming of the sky that occurred during the annular phase. Reducing the light was another artistic decision I made to create a twilight-like feeling, and I knew the darker sky would also provide better contrast for showing the different eclipse phases.
Using solar filters on both lenses, I shot a number of different eclipse phases spanning a period of approximately 45 minutes with both cameras. The total annular phase (ie “ring of fire”) occurred halfway during the period and was centered over the two eggs in the foreground. I did not shoot at equally spaced intervals for each eclipse shots, but instead focused on capturing the phases that I knew I wanted to show in my composite image. As a result, I knew the eclipse phases I was capturing would not be equally spaced in time, even though they would be equally spaced out in my composite image. This was another creative decision I made for my image.
When shooting the close-up shots of the eclipse with the telephoto lens, I put the camera in a portrait orientation, and placed all the eclipse phases in the top third of the frame, starting in the upper left hand corner and allowed the eclipse phases to form a sequence that moved across the frame to the right, while leaving enough head room for the sun to rise while staying in the frame. As the sun moves in the sky more than you have space in your frame (when shooting a series of close up images over a 45 minute period), I did have to adjust the position of the sun in the frame for some shots. While I was using a 100-500 mm telephoto zoom lens, I only zoomed in half way (a focal length of 250 mm). This ensured that each eclipse phase was shot at a size and location that could easily be blended into the sky of the composite image, without resizing and with minimal movement. All the close-up telephoto images were shot at f8, 1/1000 sec, ISO 100.
When using a 16.5-stop Nisi solar filters, the visible portions of the sun through these filters appear as pure white crescents or rings and the portions of the sun blocked by the moon appear black. Other filters intentionally create a yellow color cast for the eclipse, as people expect the sun to appear yellow in the sky (even though the white color is more accurate). I decided to add a yellow color cast to the visible portions of the sun in the eclipse, as I felt it was more intuitive, and potentially less confusing, as people normally associate a white crescents or circles in the sky with the moon. This coloration can easily be done in processing by adding a yellow “solid color” adjustment layer in Photoshop to each eclipse image and setting the blend mode for the adjustment layer to “color burn”.
Making the Composite Image
The composite image is created by opening the foreground image in Photoshop, and then stacking each of the close-up images, in the order they occurred, on top as layers. You can blend each eclipse layer into the sky of the foreground image by setting the blend mode for each eclipse layer to “lighten”. You can also convert each eclipse layer into a “smart object”, which allows for fine tuning the spacing and location of each phase in the sky.
In addition to the mechanics of assembling the blended image, there are many creative choices that must be made to realize your artistic vision for the composite image. How many eclipse phases do you include, and which ones do you show? How large should the eclipse appear, and what path should it follow in the sky? I wanted the annular “ring of fire” to be centered over the eggs while be located as accurately as possible in terms of location on the horizon and elevation in the sky. I used the “ring of fire” image taken with the wide angle lens to fine tune the location of the blended close up image of the “ring of fire” in the sky. I also wanted to show what the eclipse looked like at certain times before and after the the ring of fire that were very distinctive from each another. I was less concerned about matching up the placement of the other phases, and did not attempt to make each of these phases precise to the location where they occurred in the sky. I also wanted to show the progression of the eclipse from left to right while rising in the sky. Another creative choice I made was to show the eclipse phases in the composite image at the same size as they were captured in the close-up shots using the telephoto lens. I believe this sizing made each phase more visible and impactful, but it did make the eclipse appear somewhat larger in the sky than what you saw through eclipse glasses. The spacing is also spread out further across the sky than what occurred in reality.
You might be wondering, why shoot the eclipse phases with a separate telephoto lens, instead of just using the wide angle lens, since both had adequate solar filters on them? Wide angle lens will emphasize objects in the foreground (and make them appear larger if they are very close to your lens), which is great for your landscape. On the other hand, however, they will make objects in the distance appear smaller. I assembled a composite image using the eclipse shots I took with the wide angle lens, at the same focal length and framing that were used for the foreground and sky, to demonstrate this size distortion.
This composite does show the actual placement of the eclipse in the sky over the landscape, but as you can see, due to the size distortion, it makes the eclipse appear way too small in the image in my opinion. From my recollection, the eclipse looked bigger in the sky when I viewed it through eclipse glasses, and it certainly appeared more dramatic. The eclipse is the reason for the composition and it should appear believable but prominent in the image. The small size shown in this version of the composite does not convey the wonder of the event I witnessed, or make for a very impactful image.
One final artistic effect I experimented with was blending a sunburst (or sunstar) effect from an unfiltered shot of the partially eclipsed sun with the filtered eclipse shot of the ring of fire. A sunburst is created by the refraction of light through the very small aperture when you set your lens to f16 or higher.
In processing, I matched the coloration of the sunburst to the color of the ring of fire, and then blended the rays emanating from the sunburst that extended beyond the ring of fire into the image.
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