Two Mornings in New Mexico
Annular Solar Eclipse at Rooftop Arch (Little Delicate Arch), 13S-248971-4078008, Pilares Canyon, NM
This is not a single photograph but a compilation of 15 photographs. Due to the brightness of the sun, it can only be photographed using a solar filter. A solar filter is designed specifically for viewing the sun and is constructed not only to sufficiently dim the sunlight so that it can be seen and photographed, but also to protect your eyes and equipment from non-visible IR and UV radiation. In other words, if you properly expose for the sun, everything else in the photograph is going to be black. Therefore, you photograph other objects in the picture (such as this arch) using a camera without a solar filter, usually right before the start of the eclipse.
On this shoot, I used three cameras, set up close to one another. One camera, with a wide angle lens, was used to first photograph the arch and then, after adding a solar filter, to create a track. I set it to automatically take a photograph of the sun every 45 seconds. None of those photographs were used in this compilation. Those photographs were used to show me the position of the sun throughout the eclipse in relation to the arch. In this way when I built the compilation I knew where the sun was in relation to the arch in each stage of the eclipse. I actually have the entire eclipse, but during the second half, the sun continued to rise and, if included, the top half of the photograph would be mostly empty sky and it would not emphasize the arch as much as I wanted.
On the second camera, right next to the first camera, I used a long telephoto lens with a solar filter to take photographs of the eclipse every two minutes. The pictures you see of the different stages of the eclipse on this compilation were made with that camera. The third camera was not used for this compilation but used for the next photograph. I built the compilation in Photoshop using the track I created to correctly position the images of the sun along the actual path. I used photographs from approximately six-minute intervals, so there are 14 images of the eclipse, as the first half lasted about 83 minutes. I subtracted the black background from each photograph to make the shape of the sun more visible.
It is mid-October and I’ve been home less than two weeks since the start of July. I’m not complaining, just a bit tired and looking forward to a relaxing winter in Tucson. There’s been something to photograph almost every day and many of those subjects required early morning light, which meant departing my lodging during early morning dark. I just had two more early mornings left on my schedule and I was excited about both. I wanted to photograph this year’s Annular Solar Eclipse in northern New Mexico and try to place the ring of fire within an arch. It took a couple of days of location scouting and a lot of help from friend Peter Jamieson to make this work.
However, that is putting the eclipse before the balloon (as the old proverb goes). Our route passed right through Albuquerque during the middle of the 51st Annual Balloon Fiesta. From a modest gathering of 13 balloons in 1972, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta has grown to become the largest balloon event in the world. Each year during the first week in October, the Balloon Fiesta features about 550 balloons and 700 pilots, and attendees are allowed to wander freely amongst the balloons and witness all aspects of pre-flight. I have photographed a number of balloon events and even flown in a balloon over the Serengeti, but I’ve never seen a sky so filled with balloons or witnessed a pre-dawn ascension. Thus begins Two Mornings in New Mexico.
