2012 Annular Solar Eclipse Sunset - A Timelapse

I found out about this a few months ago and was tempted to extend my trip to Vegas for a few weeks just so that I could be in a location along the center of the moon's shadow such as Albuquerque, New Mexico or maybe even another location. The thought also crossed my mind to just drive to the Texas/New Mexico border on that day to be there when it happened and then drive home. But I got busy and was not able to plan doing that.

So on Sunday morning I was checking out the Photographer Ephemeris app on my phone to see if I could find a decent location on one of the lakes around here that would offer a reflection of the Eclipse / Sunset as it happened! It turned out that the closest location to drive to was a good looking spot. So Kevin, Cameron, Lauren, and myself packed up some chairs and our photo gear and headed to the lake about an hour prior to the eclipse starting. :-)

When we got set up and started shooting, a cloud bank developed and moved in from the west and the sun was quickly obscure by the clouds. Looking at the local radar mad things seem even worse since there were areas that were developing rain. It was really looking bad with the sun being behind the clouds and the clouds basically extending to the horizon beneath the sun. The thought had crossed my mind to go ahead and pack things up and head home. :-\ But I decided to take a look one more time a The Photographer's Ephemeris app on my phone. It shows the exactly lines of where the sun and moon both will rise and set on a map! After studying it for a moment, it looked like the sun would be on an angular path towards a waterway between two areas of land further across the lake. If it was correct, the clouds would be too far south at that point and it looked like we stood a chance at getting a peek of the eclipse as the sun was setting!

That was exactly what happened! It was such a beautiful site to see! The sun broke from the clouds after the moon had already started to move in front of it and with the haze and thinner clouds in the way, it was easy to see all of this with your own eyes! No filtering needed! ;-) We watched as the moon covered about half of the sun just as it was setting. The colors in the sunset made the show even that much more spectacular! I am glad that I didn't make the journey to see the full thing since I don't think this view could have been beat! ;-)

There were LOTS of lessons learned with the making of this time lapse! First off, I was adjusting for the exposure periodically through the sequence and wish now that I had handled that differently. It caused me to have to chop up the sequence during editing so there were several small clips that had to be merged together. The flow was not as smooth as I would have liked. There were also a few things that I left in auto in the camera settings that I will change to manual next go around. The shutter speed is also something I am going to play with to help smooth things out a bit more. Live and learn. ;-)

Flickr does NOT do vids justice at all! So.... Here is the Full HD video on YouTube with time lapse footage from three cameras. :-)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iaIR65Gqy0&feature=youtu.be

And here is the same on Vimeo... vimeo.com/42650442

Taken on: May 22, 2012

Sets appears in: • Stars/Moon/Night • Sunrise, Sunsets, and Clouds more » • Videos « less

Groups appears in: • Time-Lapse • Time Lapse Videos more » • The Photographer's Ephemeris • 2012 Annular Solar Eclipse « less

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