Thursday, June 10th, was a special day. I woke up early and went out to photograph the partial lunar eclipse happening at sunrise. It had been a while since I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to go take pictures so when my friends Mark and Andy invited me to go with them to the Air Force Memorial I couldn’t say no.
The first peak of the sun rising over the horizon.
The plan was to photograph the solar event as the sun was rising over the Washington DC skyline.
It was so cool to witness this particular sunrise. It was obviously very unique and just so happened to be my very first time photographing an eclipse. To be honest, I hadn’t done much research before waking up in the morning. I was just looking forward to seeing something cool.
My favorite part was seeing how bright this sun crescent got to be. It also sort of looks like cheese, or a Pacman in the sky.
There were a handful of other photographers already at the memorial and others who were just there to watch the event. They were even prepared with solar glasses. I need to get a pair myself for next time I want to photograph an eclipse. A friend recommended these off of amazon. Most of the time I was shooting on a tripod and through my camera’s LiveView so I didn’t have to look directly into the sun, but glancing up once in a while, I could tell that the sun was extremely powerful. A few people have asked and I did not shoot with a lens filter. I mostly exposed for the sun which made the foreground really dark and lightened everything up in Lightroom.
The eclipse was visible for about 20 minutes before it hid behind the clouds. So we packed up our things and created a few shots of the Air Force Memorial before heading out. Overall it was a great morning out and well worth the early wake-up alarm. Can’t wait for the next one in 2024!
