(2019) It’s difficult to resist the urge to capture it with a camera, however modest. Something so fleeting compels you to reserve every second of your view for this incredible, beautiful, and planetary phenomenon. It hadn’t happened in Chile for 25 years, and back then, getting to Putre wasn’t easy, nor was obtaining the necessary glasses. Many of us were able to see the 1994 eclipse using the shadows cast by holes in cardboard or smoked glass. We felt the same as many others this time: ‘I wish I could have seen everything go dark.’ I don’t regret going to see it and leaving everything behind, but rather not insisting more that my loved ones go.

To the naked eye, it’s impossible to see it until it’s 100% covered. Each stage has its own charm, from the moment the moon appears, to the different shapes of an arc that contracts and expands, to when the remaining ‘linear’ arc begins to shrink. Every second is exhilarating. But when it happens… when this happens, the moon appears translucent for a brief moment, the sun’s rays envelop it from the front, and this convergence of faint, slightly bluish rays converges at the moon’s center, passing through the visible rays of the solar corona, which move and separate the sun’s rays like petals of an exotic sea flower. The stars appear, and the excited shouts of the crowd fall silent. The temperature drops, some dogs bark, the horizon glows like at dawn, and you can see that the sun has already risen beyond. There are no words to describe how tiny one feels; the place where one is ceases to matter. It’s as if the universe is looking at us.

The only thing I can tell you is to make it a top priority to go south next year (2020) It will be on December 14th, around the latitude of Temuco. On the morning of July 2nd, the sun rose so bright it seemed to herald what was to come. I’m sure we’ll have the same luck next year, and if you’re not so sure, I’ve already picked the spot.

Here’s one of the photos I took, a bit of a shot in the dark, since I tried to keep my eye on the eclipse. I didn’t have a tripod, so that’s why it’s blurry, but… it turned out kind of cool, right? See less

originally posted on July 15, 2019

Nikon D100, Nikkor 50mm 1: 1.4 – no so steady hands

And in case anyone’s wondering, during the 2020 eclipse in southern Chile, clouds prevented anyone from seeing anything. Luckily, I wasn’t there.