Second Looks: In Search of Totality

The afterglow of vacations and trips always seems to fade too soon, but I can attest that the experience of watching the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 in Martinsville, Indiana, has had some real staying power! It’s as if I never completely came back home from that short little trek down south, barely two hours away from where I live in Lafayette. Mom had put eclipses on my radar way back around 1962 when I was 12 years old. Back then my family was living in Santiago, Chile, where Dad worked as a mining geologist. One early morning Mom got me up in the dark and we traveled to some observatory or similar observation point to see an eclipse. I remember being so sleepy and the morning air being cold and a little red wool sweater I had initially resisted taking along feeling so good, but I don’t remember what the eclipse looked like. I think it was an annular one. But that morning Mom had planted a seed.

It was in 2017 that I first started hearing the word “Totality.” We weren’t in it. During the 2017 eclipse, my husband Ben and I were driving to Washington D.C. to help my brother Bert. We stopped at a scenic rest area somewhere in Ohio or Pennsylvania to see what we could see. We weren’t alone. Fellow travelers were congregated in groups gazing up at the sun and sharing their eclipse glasses with curious passers-by. Since we weren’t in the path of totality, the sky never got dark, but I had fun in the truck with the diy paper plate eclipse viewer and taking pictures of eclipse watchers and crescent-shaped shadows filtering through the leaves of trees at the rest area. Meanwhile in Lafayette our friends actually got up early that same morning, drove four to six hours to Hopkinsville, Kentucky to witness 2 or 3 minutes of totality, and then turned around and drove back the same day. I envied them.

Fast forward to early 2024. I was so excited when I heard of the approaching total eclipse in April. Initially I understood Lafayette would be in the path of totality. But as eclipse day grew nearer, I saw on maps that Lafayette was falling a short distance outside the path and would experience 90 to 95 percent of totality. Surrounding towns like Crawfordsville, Frankfort, and Indianapolis were still in the path. I saw eclipse glasses at Pay Less along with a booklet about the upcoming eclipse and grabbed up several copies and pairs. This time I really wanted to see totality. I started looking and talking to Ben about potential observation points and venues. Then late in February or early in March, my friend and former boss Marilyn texted our monthly lunch group notifying us that Imperial Travel was offering a one-day bus trip to Cedar Creek Winery south of Indy to observe the eclipse. Would anyone like to go? I raised my virtual hand.

“Ooh! Me! Me!”

So she and I ended up reserving 2 bus seats at $69.00 ea. Since the tour would of necessity be an all-day affair starting at 6:30 in the morning and lasting til after the eclipse sometime in the evening, Ben and the rest of the ladies in the lunch group decided to stay home and observe in Lafayette. Marilyn wanted to go to honor her husband Mark who had unexpectedly passed a year after the 2017 eclipse they had driven to Hopkinsville to see. My husband had introduced Marilyn and Mark in the early 2000’s. I also wanted to go to honor Mom who had passed in 2017. I knew if she was still alive, not only would she be 100 years old but she would be going with us on this trip. Being in the path of totality, Indiana was expected to experience record crowds and traffic. In fact several states in the path of totality were encouraged to prepare for the eclipse as if they were preparing for a disaster and to have ample supplies of water and emergency items on hand.

With the plans to go to the center of totality finalized, a fresh thought bubbled up in my brain. I had purchased an iPhone 15 Pro Max the preceding fall.

“Hmmm… I wonder if I can get some decent pictures of the eclipse with this new iPhone?” It boasted a 5x optical magnification lens.

There remained about 3 ½ weeks till eclipse day. At the time I was also finishing up taxes. Little did I know the can of worms I was opening!

I started by googling how to photograph an eclipse with a smartphone. Google had a quite a few helpful articles to get me started. These were very readable and included advice such as equipment needed and settings to use and what scenes to try for. Almost immediately I began a back and forth with Amazon and our favorite Amazon return location Kohl’s, as I looked for protective filters to protect both my eyes and my camera’s lens from the eclipse, stable tripods to eliminate camera shake in lowlight and that were easy for me to use and that came with a way to mount a smart phone, camera remotes, and attachable telephoto lenses and/or telescopes and monoculars/spotting scopes. Turns out nothing was easy. The iPhone 15 Pro Max with its new complicated camera system offering 7 focal points and three optical lenses was not easy to fit out. I found the clip telephoto lenses were difficult to position correctly over the lens, hard to keep in place, and also needed a protective lens cover as I assumed did the other lenses that were not covered. And which lens did you clip it over? In short they just did not work very well if at all. Similar situation with the telescopes and monoculars and spotting scopes. I was pretty quick to reject any product that gave me difficulties as I tried out my equipment on my back porch and as I really wanted to SEE the eclipse, not struggle with equipment and end up missing the whole thing! We only had four minutes of totality which is actually long for totality, but there was so much to try to capture. From the Pay Less booklet I learned about the Diamond Ring and Bailey’s Beads and the stars coming out, and the 360-degree horizon, people’s faces as they were watching the eclipse, the "oohs" and "aahs" from the crowd when totality occurred, the four contacts… I soon realized one camera was not going to be enough if I wanted to try to tell the whole story!

Then the worry about the weather. Cloudy skies the week before gave me few opportunities to practice with the equipment, which was highly recommended. I ended up practicing shooting the sun and moon only a few times later in the day, hopefully enough to at least remember how to be relatively comfortable assembling and using everything. I finally settled on a couple of plans based on the advice I was getting from Google. If possible I would use my new iPhone on the tripod to film the entire event at max resolution because I read that you could extract really good stills from those videos and I could also capture crowd sounds. I eliminated the idea of digging out my old Panasonic LUMIX semi-DSLR because I had not touched it in years and was pretty out of touch with all those old manual and semi-manual digital camera skills. Having crossed completely to the iPhone side years ago, I thought my chances for satisfying results with the LUMIX would be pretty slim. But I would also take my iPad and Ben’s Jitterbug smartphone for the wide-angle and ground shots. Of course, I would now need to buy protective filters for those cameras. I purchased two Solar Snap kits for around $16.00 ea, which came with the protective eyeglasses and camera lens filters and a free camera app for taking snapshots of the eclipse. It was designed by a scientist from NASA who wanted to make eclipse photography accessible to people and their smartphones. And now I needed to see if the app would work on all three cameras. It didn’t work on the Jitterbug. And I kept wondering if I could use the more available macro lenses instead of a telephoto lens because the marketing pitches seemed to imply it but not really come out and say it

Right down to the Wednesday before eclipse day which fell on the succeeding Monday, I ordered some screw-on telephoto lenses for the iPhone. I also ordered a camera cage that you attach your phone to that had handles on each end. It had a plate that you could align your phones built-in lenses to and to which you could screw in your attachable lenses. It was primarily used for video. I ordered two screw-in telephoto lenses, a 2X and an 8X that were supposed to be compatible with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Only the 2X was, so I kept it and returned the other. And with all that extra stuff the phone still had to be mountable on the tripod and the lenses needed protective filters and tried out with my native and non-native camera apps.

I also experienced considerable angst as I followed the weather forecasts. The weather had been cloudy and rainy all week and the ten-day forecast for Martinsville on Monday had stayed pretty much on cloudy. But not wanting to scuttle this venue for various reasons, I prayed, yes, I did, and then resigned myself to what will be will be.

On the morning of eclipse day, the alarm went off at 5:00 am. The busses were scheduled to leave at 6:30 am, no exceptions. I had tagged and packed everything the night before – all my camera gear, water and snacks, chair, umbrellas, and sunscreen – everything on the list that Imperial Travel had mailed us. I had set out my clothes the night before and Ben had gotten the car out of the barn and parked it close to the house. He had asked me to leave him a pair of eclipse glasses so that he could watch from home. I had showed him how they worked and left him two on the kitchen counter. The sky was clear. The forecast was showing clear weather for Lafayette, but cloudy weather for Martinsville. My first stop that early morning was the Starbucks drive through. I had told Marilyn I would bring coffee of our choice and muffins to the bus. Due to traffic concerns the bus wasn’t stopping for breakfast. When I got to the bus rendezvous point, I saw cars arriving, and two busses waiting. The staff was wonderful. They told me which bus I was on, helped me carry my various bags and chair, and were so friendly. Marilyn had already secured us two seats close to the front of the bus. The front of the bus was completely see-through. I was pleasantly surprised to find some friends from church sitting behind us.

The winery was 87 miles from Lafayette, about an hour and a half’s drive. The trip went by pleasantly and quickly with no traffic delays. The guides passed around a schedule of the eclipse which would start around 2 pm and last till 4pm and showed low- key promotional videos of some of the agency’s other tour offerings. When the busses pulled into Cedar Creek Winery around 8 am, the skies were sunny and blue. I felt so blessed and grateful and loved when I saw that!

The parking area was some distance from the Winery or maybe it just seemed like it because of all the stuff we were carrying. We all disembarked with our carry-ons and picked up more bags and chairs from the under-the-bus storage and then headed down a longish lane to a clearing where the winery stood surrounded by a large grassy lawn. An outdoor stage stood to one side in front of a wooded area. Behind us pop-up tents and food trucks lined a short lane leading to a barn. Portable potties lined a small hill a short distance away. At the moment, country music from a cd was playing through the stage's loudspeakers. A band was going to play at one pm, we were informed. I hoped that they would stop during the eclipse so that we could hear the birds go quiet when it got dark.

Other eclipse-chasers had already arrived, I assume, to assure themselves parking space and an ample selection of observation points. Families had brought games and sports equipment to help pass the time. Marilyn and I found an open grassy spot on the lawn to set up our chairs and my tripod. Marilyn went in search of coffee and hot chocolate.

With ample time on our hands, we went off exploring. Along with other visitors, we checked out the food truck offerings and walked through the booths enjoying the baked wares and various displays from Martinsville and nearby. Other folks sat on the winery’s veranda and had breakfast. Vendors were very friendly and conversational. I especially enjoyed seeing people’s eclipse tee shirts, ones like, “I Blacked Out at Cedar Creek Winery on 4-8-2024,” and “I Got Mooned in Martinsville on 4-8-2024,” and the cute face of the cat staring at us wide-eyed in front of an eclipsed sun with the small print reading, “Proceeds go to the local Humane Society.”

I was especially intrigued by a book truck from a store called Fables and Fairy Tales which was parked across from the entrance to the booths. The store was located in Martinsville. I bought an eclipse tee shirt and then noticed a table display of books. I picked up one entitled “American Eclipse: A NATION’S EPIC RACE TO CATCH THE SHADOW OF THE MOON AND WIN THE GLORY OF THE WORLD” by David Baron, a writer for PBS/NPR. A bookstore employee noticed me and came over to chat. Turns out she was the individual who picked the books. I learned the book was about a total eclipse which had occurred in the Great American West in 1878. The author had timed his book to come out for the Total Eclipse of 2017 and had since updated it for today’s eclipse. When I asked if people recommended it, she told me it had had been rated a fairly good read. I bought it. In retrospect, it turned out to be one of my better reading choices ever!

It was hot, we had lunch at a food truck, cooled ourselves with drinks on the front porch of the winery, when they said to bring an umbrella I never thought about it being for the sun and so I had brought a clear one! Went back to our spot and I started reading the book I’d just purchased while Marilyn went on a contemplative walk. It was really interesting, among other notable scientists and astronomers of the time, it was about Thomas Edison.

Shortly before 2p when the eclipse was due to start, I started getting out my gear and tripod and setting up. I felt like I had plenty of time. I checked all the recommended settings on my phone camera apps and attached the phone to the tripod with the smartphone adapter, taped a protective filter over the camera lenses, mounted my own protective glasses on my head so that I could swap them “on” and “off” to look at the sun and or at my phone screen, and aimed the camera toward the sky. Well, Fiddle! Try as I might, I could not find the sun with my camera screen! The sun was much higher in the sky than it was when I practiced with the tripod on my back porch in the early evenings. I found I almost had to position the camera parallel to the ground on the tripod. Still, I couldn’t bring the sun into view. It was also much brighter. The reflection of my face and the green grass beneath my feet was so strong in the glass that I couldn’t see what the screen was focusing on. At that awkward angle I also had trouble seeing the camera controls with my 74-year-old eyes. My face was too close to the camera. I looked at Marilyn and shook my head.

“I can’t find the sun.”

Then, again, “I can’t see the camera controls.”

I looked around me. There was another tripod some distance away, closer to the stage. A young couple was busy attaching a phone to it. Nothing else was close by. I didn’t want to interrupt anyone, so I just kept trying. Finally, I gave up and just sat down on my chair and started watching the eclipse like everybody else with my eclipse glasses. The moon had already taken a small bite out of the sun. First contact was happening! It looked eerie seeing that dark orb very slowly and quietly floating by the sun, its movement almost imperceptible but for the shrinking crescent of the sun. Somewhere in that time space, I decided to ditch the idea of taking a video on the tripod and using the two extra cameras. I removed my primary camera from the tripod and inserted it into my phone cage, leaned back in my chair and aimed it at the sky. This time I had very little trouble finding the sun. I found the cage handles stabilized the camera and the phone and cage conveniently shaded my eyes when I aimed the cage at the sky. There was still plenty of time before second contact. I fired up the Solar Snap App and set it up for the partial stage (before totality). I believe the timer took a picture every 3 seconds. The photos looked fairly decent for a phone camera. Then I switched to the native camera app and tried out the video with the native telephoto lenses and wide-angle shots. It was pretty quick and easy to switch between the two camera apps. I’m not sure if the Solar Snap App still tried to take a picture when I was using the native app. The drawbacks were that I was supposed to set the native app to raw mode when I switched back to it. I forgot to do that. As for the Solar Snap App, I tended to forget it was on a timer and tried to take random shots as well. I got up and walked around for a bit taking photos of the crowd and the landscape, quickly switching back to Solar Snap when I wanted to check on the moon’s progress. As more of the sun’s light became blocked, the early afternoon light slowly took on a sharpened golden-hour character. Marilyn pointed out that the stage lights had come on. I realized suddenly that the early afternoon heat had switched to a cooling, comfortable breeze.

Finally, the sun turned into a tiny orange sliver that barely stretched a quarter or an eighth of the way around the moon’s circumference.

A voice yelled, “Here it comes!” Then the sliver disappeared, and for moments we were staring at nothing where there had previously been a sun. Empty black sky. I took my eclipse glasses off and untaped the camera filter. Everything had gone dark as a version of a “night sky” suddenly turned on. I saw stars and planets. Then, as if someone had held a lit match to a gas pilot, the sun’s corona flared up around the moon and we all gasped and whistled and cheered. I switched the Solar Snap Appto totality mode which I believe snaps a photo every 5 seconds. There seemed to be plenty of time to switch back and forth. I scooted down in my chair, leaned my head back, and looked up with my naked eye or my camera screen, relishing the ease and comfort of the position and thought, “All I needed to bring was this phone and a reclining chair. The next total eclipse will be 20 or 40 years from, I guess I can do it then – when I’m 90 or 110!”

4 minutes -a long time for totality but then over too soon. All of a sudden the daylight came back on. I put my eclipse glasses back on and retaped my camera lens filter.

At Marilyn’s suggestion, she and I got our photo taken together with the partially eclipsed sun behind us, thanks to an obliging stranger.

The bus drivers used an alternate route back to Lafayette trying to dodge the traffic. For the most part it worked, except for the leg of the trip on US 231 between Crawfordsville and Lafayette. We left the winery around 5p and got back to Lafayette around 7:30pm – 8:00pm.

The week that followed I finished the book. I was so glad I had bought it. Reading the struggles, and trials, and challenges, and obstacles the group of scientists faced getting out west in 1878 with their teams and equipment was, well, affirmational to the human spirit! It brought home the point that an eclipse is not an easy thing to photograph or study and requires a fair amount of planning ahead, and like most things in life, it's best to do with friends! Eclipses are meant to be shared.