Several months ago I began to get a little bit interested in the possibility of trying my hand in creating some pretty basic solar eclipse photographs and the more research I did I became more and more interested. Once I realized I had pretty much the PERFECT spot to photograph from (my Dad's old place in between Madisonville and Tellico Plains, TN) I really started trying to learn as much as I could about the whole process. Turns out there is a LOT to it!

The Canon Learning Center has an excellent guide to solar eclipse photography that I learned a lot from, and armed with just enough information to be dangerous I went ahead and ordered a 12" by 12" sheet of black polymer from Thousand Oaks Optical to make some filters out of. Turns out this was exactly enough material for a 600mm f/4.0, a 400mm f/2.8, a 200-500mm f/5.6, and a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens.

About a month before "The Big Day" I decided it was time to get some long glass rented and discovered there was practically nothing available until the day AFTER the eclipse. Woops! At that point I lost a little bit of interest but continued to search for some lenses, then one day I had the crazy thought of contacting Nikon Pro Services and seeing what they could do to help me, fully expecting to hear that nothing was available. Much to my surprise, I quickly had a 600mm f/4.0 with a 2.0 teleconverter heading my way. Things were really beginning to get serious!

My friend Wade Payne was photographing the eclipse for the Knoxville News Sentinel from Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains so we decided to come up with a way to quickly remove the filters to ensure we could shoot as much as possible during totality. Turns out this was VERY important to the final outcome!

I was having a difficult time with my tripod selection until I remembered I had a massive Bogen tripod that my buddy Neil Copeland had loaned me a while back. Worked like a champ!

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Allan Jones Aquatic Center, Knoxville, TN

A Digital Photographer's Self Introduction to Film