Triptychs

Totality is such a fleeting experience; so much happens in such a short amount of time that it can be absolutely dizzying; as a photographer, that translates to a laundry list of things to be certain of in a very short span of time. Did I take the solar filter off of the lens? Is my lens stabilized? Do I have the ISO and the settings correct? Most importantly...will the weather hold up? The weather was my very biggest concern when shooting the eclipse...and in a stroke of absolutely cosmic luck, we got to see the eclipse surrounded by a halo of clouds. Had we been even a mile or two in any other direction, we wouldn't have seen it...and yet, there it was. Just as the eclipse started to end, the moon moving away from the solar disc, the clouds began to roll in...and as the clouds started to obscure the sun, the brilliant and aptly named "diamond ring" effect (where the sun's light forms a brilliant 'gem' at the apex of the lunar disc) took shape. It took me weeks after the fact to realize I'd even captured the effect, as I pored through all the hundreds and hundreds of eclipse photographs I took, all in the pursuit of that one perfect, shining image. I couldn't be happier that I managed to capture it.

This is totality. For two brief minutes, after having spent years of planning, and hours huddled beneath a $4 beach umbrella in the blazing South Carolina sun, the skies finally went dark at 2:39 pm, and I was able to behold the utter majesty of a total solar eclipse. It is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most amazing thing I have ever seen. What you see here is a close-up view of the sun's corona, a 15,000,000 F superheated blanket of magnetized plasma that trails into space in long, curved trails; this is the sun's 'atmosphere', and it can only be seen during a total solar eclipse. Also visible on the righthand side of the sun is a prominence, an enormous loop of superheated plasma arcing from the surface of the sun that could envelop the entirety of our planet Earth; these are also only visible during a total solar eclipse. This may very well have been the most challenging thing I have attempted shooting a photograph of, from the travel and planning required to the expenses paid in acquiring equipment, but it was worth it.

Living in Pennsylvania, it's only natural that I live close to a lush deciduous forest; the kind that changes colors during the fall. One morning I decided to get up, grab my camera, and take a little hike back into the woods, to see what I could find; the result is here before you, a warm palette set against the cool sunlight of a mid-autumn day. It's just a shame the colors don't last very long! You're lucky to get maybe two weeks of prime time, before the leaves fall from their branches, and the forests are left bare and brown.

The day came to a close at the fishing docks in Newport, Oregon. The ships were coming to port, the activity came to a crawl as workers turned in their shifts, the sun drooping steadily below the horizon. And yet, through the approach of nightfall, the sea lions continued to bellow. Their cries mingled with the ever present caws of the nearby seagulls, all of them opportunistically plucking at the waters for that next tasty fish. As for the workers of the dock, their day was done. Beautiful scene, isn't it? I thought so, too.

My photograph, "Wooden Warmth" is one of the more popular photographs that I've offered here at Nulion Photography, but it of course wasn't the only photo I'd taken there! While visiting those gorgeous woods along the slopes of Mt. Hood, in Oregon, after taking the shot that would become "Wooden Warmth", I aimed my camera skyward. What I saw was this; the day's final sunlight as it filtered through the treetops, trunks casting stark shadows against the leafy canopy. As I recall, that was my last photograph for the day; not five minutes later, the sun had dipped far enough beneath the horizon that the warm, golden color seen here had faded into memory. Skip forward several years, and I still had yet to find a way to make this photograph shine.

Walking through the woods near Mt. Hood, in Oregon, we made our way to the Zig Zag falls along a nice little nature trail. The whole forest was beautiful, so different from the forests you'd find in Pennsylvania, and everything had a warmer, softer, mossier feel to it. Then, on the way out of the woods, I noticed the sunlight filtering through the trees and how it gave the woods such a warm look...and I knew I had to capture it on my camera. This here is the result, after combining the images together into a single, beautiful HDR!