Eclipse over the Tetons - the view from Table Mountain
Like some other astrophotographers I know, I'm better at capturing data than I am at processing and publishing it..
One year ago today I was watching the 'Great American Eclipse' in Idaho. One of my other 12 automated cameras had been planted on the 3385m/11,100ft summit of Table Mountain in Wyoming three days earlier. The day after the eclipse I returned to hike the mountain again and see what I had captured. Here is the story and the result.. that so nearly wasn't. I considered myself the luckiest person in the world that day.
Some technical info.. this was captured with Canon 5D Mark IV (via LensRentals), with Samyang 14mm f2.4 lens @f4. 2000 exposures of 1/8 sec at ISO100 captured over ten minutes covering two minutes of totality +/- four minutes either side. With superfast CF card, camera was capturing 3.3 frames per second without missing a beat for the whole ten minutes. Canon TC-80N3 timer release was used to program the three-day delay from setting up the camera till eclipse time - I had to make sure I had my maths right for that! Processing with Lightroom, LRTimelapse, After Effects and Premiere Pro.
If my house was burning down and I could only save one image from my collection.. this would be it. I have never invested so much time, effort, passion and luck into anything else.
While I was focused on honing down all of my eclipse-rig gear to fit into an airliner's overhead locker, you blew me away with your no-compromise approach by shipping a 747 freighter's worth of cameras etc. to the USA
Thanks Peter, Andy, Derek and Pete - it means a lot to be able to share this with people who understand what's involved. To most folks it's just a pretty picture of the sun over a mountain!
I very much enjoyed your story of how you trekked to set up the camera. Such determination deserves good results.
I assume -
1. you didn't see any bears, or
2. the bear spray was successful,
because you returned to tell the tale.
cheers Phil
I very much enjoyed your story of how you trekked to set up the camera. Such determination deserves good results.
I assume -
1. you didn't see any bears, or
2. the bear spray was successful,
because you returned to tell the tale.
cheers Phil
#1 in this case. I did see bears on another walk (not alone at that time thankfully) and also on the road in the Yukon later.
Really quite a staggering effort Phil - combining the mountaineering experience, extreme remote data collection, and some brilliant planning, composition and skill with the imaging. It's got to be one of the most atmospheric eclipse images I've ever seen (especially as I'm a sucker for mountains too), and has quite the story to go with it.
I love the timelapses you've done too, top quality.
Really quite a staggering effort Phil - combining the mountaineering experience, extreme remote data collection, and some brilliant planning, composition and skill with the imaging. It's got to be one of the most atmospheric eclipse images I've ever seen (especially as I'm a sucker for mountains too), and has quite the story to go with it.
I love the timelapses you've done too, top quality.
Thanks Andy for the kind words Good to see it appreciated by another 'sucker for mountains!