Landscape Photography

After a year of planning and driving thousands of miles, I was able to capture and create this composite image of the 2023 annular solar eclipse.

Selecting the spot was a challenge. With the eclipse happening at 10:30am, the sun would be decently high in the sky, but still low enough to incorporate the landscape, if you could work the right composition. I found myself settling on Factory Butte, Utah to photograph this celestial event. After first visiting the area a couple years ago, it instantly became a favorite place of mine. The otherworldly badlands couldn't be better for photographing an eclipse, and the height of the butte with the expanse of badlands would give me many compositional options for framing up the sun's arc across the sky.

Obsessively checking the weather, I laughed the morning of the eclipse when I saw that every hour was forecast as clear, but 10 am as "Partly Cloudy." My wife and I had joked that I'd drive thousands of miles out there just to photograph the specific cloud that passes in front of the eclipse. Luckily, while some very thin high altitude clouds did build during maximum eclipse, they did not adversely affect the photograph as the sun's brightness still powered right through them.

I had two cameras running on intervalometers during the entire eclipse. One had a wide angle lens and was photographing the landscape and placement of the sun in the sky. The other had a 400mm zoom lens and solar filter on, and was capturing close up images of the eclipse itself.

I can't tell you just how many emotions hit when the eclipse reached its maximum. No mishaps, no gear failures, no flat tires, I did it! I photographed the eclipse! But there was still work to be done....

Getting home after a few days of driving, I settled on taking the nine exposures of the eclipse to showcase a timelapse progression of the event. I blended these images into the sky of a singular image the landscape camera had captured right when the eclipse began. I used the other photos from the landscape camera to place the eclipse exposures where they would actually be seen in the sky from that angle at the times those images were taken. Going the composite route, I wanted to encapsulate the entire experience of the event in a single frame.

Despite the challenges and uncertainties, I am happy to present to you my final image of the 2023 solar eclipse, as observed from southern Utah!