12/24/2023 0 Comments Solar eclipse maestroMy camera & telephoto lens relied on a more low-tech solution after each photo, I'd recompose the shot in the camera to prepare for the next three minutes of solar motion. Mike's telescope was set up on an automatic tracking mount which would follow the march of the Sun across the sky. Once we had committed to the area next to the runway, the GPS coordinates were plugged into Solar Eclipse Maestro. Photo credit: Jared Haworth / We Report SpaceĪt noon, we began hauling all our gear out to the assembly point, creating a small but well equipped photo office on the taxiway adjacent to an active runway though no flight operations were scheduled during the eclipse, the flight line remained in an active state in the event of emergency landings - thankfully none of those took place while we were there. Worrisome clouds over an F-16 on the flight line at Shaw AFB. Since this was just a static display, the jets were moved individually by an aircraft tug under the direction of an Air Force Master Sergeant, with an airman riding inside the cockpit in order to operate the brakes, an amusing detail, but also a job any of us would have happily accepted, just for the chance to ride around in a plane. In one of the cooler moments in my professional and personal life, I found myself in a position to direct the placement of a pair of US Air Force jets, signaling back and forth with hand signals in between taking test shots to create a compelling arrangement of military hardware. After a quick tour of the shooting area, the airmen assigned to the Viper Demo Team began moving two F-16 jets into position for us. With C1 scheduled to happen just after 1pm EDT, and totality at 2:45pm, and two jets to move into position, our day at Shaw AFB started at 10am, where we were met by a Staff Sergeant from the 20th Fighter Wing Public Affairs office. I drove Solar Eclipse Maestro, a MacOS program which would control the telephoto shots from the start of first contact (C1) through to the completion of the eclipse (C4), through my planned script on multiple occasions to ensure that the camera and laptop would have enough battery power to survive the entire eclipse. Mike set up time lapse photos of playground equipment as a stand-in for something roughly the size of an F-16, to determine an ideal focal length and composition. In the days before the eclipse, we would carry our cameras out into the sun with filters & computer controllers to test exposures, composition, and timing. In the weeks leading up to the eclipse, we purchased ISO-certified solar glasses and camera filters. Mike worked extensively with the PhotoPills app on iOS to plot the start & stop points of the eclipse relative to Sumter, SC, and coordinated with the Viper Demo Team on a pair of potential shooting locations on base. We would support those with a series of still cameras with wide angle lenses to capture photos of the F-16 jets on the ramp with the blacked-out sun overhead. Our plans, roughly, were to use a pair of cameras with long lenses (one telephoto, one telescope) to capture up-close details of the eclipse. Photo credit: Jared Haworth / We Report Space Testing a solar filter film sheet in a homemade frame. Our setup on the day of the eclipse began Monday morning with the Public Affairs team from the 20th Fighter Wing, but our preparation had started days before in identifying the path and height of the sun, and ideal placement of assets on the ground for the best possible photos. Sumter, and Shaw AFB sits on the northern edge of the path of totality, giving us 105 seconds of darkness starting at 2:45pm EDT. The team was able to place two F-16 Fighting Falcon jets on the ramp adjacent to Runway 04L for us to incorporate into our photos of the eclipse. On August 21, 2017, We Report Space photographers Michael Seeley and I (along with photography assistants Jenn Seeley and Dawn Haworth) traveled to Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, SC to photograph the Total Solar Eclipse as guests of the 20th Fighter Wing and the F-16 Viper Demo Team.
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