I stayed in town for the eclipse.   It was reported that there would be over 90% coverage here, and that turned out to be not so bad.  Of course there were none of the favored shots of totality and the diamond ring effect, etc., but it was still spectacular to whitness and the shots turned out pretty good.

We spent four hours in a field.  It was pretty clear and very warm with only a few clouds wandering around in the north.  I didn’t think the clouds would be a factor for us, but I kept an eye on them all day.  Toward the end they actually came into play, but by that time we were almost done anyway and only missed maybe the last 10 minutes of the evolution.  You can see in the image below that the last couple of shots look somewhat hazy.  That’s because of the clouds moving in.  It was also unexpected, though not surprising that the temperature dropped significantly during the totality.  It felt good after standing in the sun for so long.

I had originally intended to purchase an expensive filter for this shoot, but waited too long.  I ended up with a film type of filter.  I used a piece of foam core to mount it on.  Cutting an exact hole in the foam core to match the end of my lens.  It was a nice snug fit and did the job very well.  I think this filter will be stored away securely so it’s available for 2024.

Looking at the images from the day, I’d have to say there was nothing really “spectacular”.  I thought no one would be very interested in any single shot, as they were probably just like everything else, so a composite sequenced shot was in order.

I’d never done one of these, but it was pretty simple in Photoshop.  I just loaded all the post processed images into PS by selecting them in Adobe Bridge and clicking “Load Files into Photoshop Layers” from the Tools menu.  I then created a new layer and filled it with the paint bucket to a solid black and then moved it to the bottom of the list so as to act as the background.   Then began the process of changing the blending mode on all images to “Lighten”.  Unfortunately, this has to be done one at a time.  When finished, use the move tool and select each layer and move it to the position you desire.

Aligning the images, for me, was an issue, given the lack of totality.  That’s why I decided not to put them in a straight line like most people do.  I didn’t like the way it looked at all.