The Gulls and the Eclipse

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On October 14th 2023, an annular solar eclipse took place, visible to some extent across most of North and South America. With solar eclipses being such rare occurrences, I had bee n thinking about how I was going to photograph it since the start of the year, and had decided I wanted to try to take a more unique approach by incorporating birds into my images. I began to closely follow the weather forecast, to determine where I’d need to be in order to escape the clouds. Unfortunately, much of the Pacific Northwest would be blanketed by overcast skies. As the forecast updated each day, I went through a few plan revisions, but ultimately made the call the day before the eclipse to travel to Victoria at the south end of Vancouver Island, Canada, where gaps in the clouds were forecasted for a couple hours during the eclipse. I was actually hoping for some thin passing clouds, which would soften the light and make for a more striking scene. My planning was rewarded with wonderful conditions for eclipse viewing, and I spent the ~2 hour duration of the partial eclipse trying to line up birds with the sun. This image features two Glaucous-winged Gulls, photographed in front of the eclipse. I used a 10-stop neutral density filter to help get the proper exposure in front of the partially eclipsed sun, and shot at a small aperture of f/40 to retain detail in both the gulls and the sky. Show more