2017 Solar Eclipse from Florida - Original Time Lapse and Sun Shadows Pictures

Well it came and went as promised, The Great American Solar Eclipse of 2017. Although we don't live in the path of totality for today's eclipse, we did get 80% coverage which was good enough to capture images of the crescent Sun, witness the eerie dimming of the mid-afternoon light, and take some fun photos of Sun shadows cast by the trees.

I really wanted to photograph today's eclipse, but I found myself a bit unprepared and lacking the proper solar filters needed to properly photograph the Sun. Having lost track of time this past week with work and preparing for "back to school" day for my son, I didn't even remember to pick up a pair of solar glasses. So I quickly improvised a plan.

I put my polarizing lens on my Nikon D5300 camera, popped out the lenses from an old cheap pair of sunglasses and double stacked them over the camera lens. This reduced the light enough to make this work, and also added some unexpected funky color effects to the photos. To further reduce the direct light into the camera even more, I never put the Sun in the center of the camera's field of focus.

Using internal lens flare to track the progression of the eclipse.

Keeping the Sun to the lower right side of the view created the usually unwanted "lens flair" inside the camera optics, but for today this was a good thing. This allowed me to safely "see" the progression of the eclipse without ever having to look directly at it to focus the camera. I simply focused on the flare image, then switch my exposure setting back and forth to take pictures of that, and then the real image of the sun.

My technique for tracking the eclipse without proper Sun filters.

To get the refracted image, I set the shutter speed to 400 and the ISO 400. To capture the actual Sun eclipse I simply switched the settings to 4000 shutter speed and 100 ISO. Note that similar to a mirror, the refracted image of the Sun is reversed.

I later cropped the images in Photoshop to center the eclipse in the final images.

Stages of maximum coverage with passing clouds.

Capturing fun Sun Shadows during the eclipse...

In between taking pictures of the Sun, I ran around to check out all the cool shadows that were being cast through the leaves of the trees. Different trees with different types of leaves created unique patterns and sizes which I thought was really neat. These photos were taken with my Samsung Galaxy S5 phone camera.

Shadows cast by Palm Tree fronds.

Shadows cast by Oak Tree leaves.

Shadows cast by Bottlebrush Tree leaves.

I hope you enjoyed viewing my eclipse photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.

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