I've been wanting to get into photography for a while now, but never really done anything about it. Until this week.
I'm a bit of a geek, I'll be honest, and with the solar eclipse this week, I figured that I had a good opportunity to go out and try my hand at taking some pictures of something that I find really cool! (I love space, its just so mysterious and beautiful).It came to Friday morning and if I'm honest, I was really disappointed with the weather, I was gutted that something that really, you'll only see once a lifetime was to be covered by a sky of cloud.
I drove to work as I usually do, and the forecast of a visible eclipse was already looking doubtful. Even though the peak time in Yorkshire wasn't to be until around 9.35am, I felt at 8.30, that I would struggle to see this natural beauty that I had been looking forward to since its forecast weeks prior.
After almost giving up on even seeing the eclipse, I was sat in my office at work, and although cloud covered the sky, the time got nearer to the optimum viewing time forecasted by the weather presenters, and you could still see a difference in the sky above.
The sky turned from a grey, cloud filled view, to a pitch black horizon.
I'd been told about the eclipse before, about the true darkness, about the change in temperature, the noticeable cold. And true to form, the sky darkened, and I truly felt the cold, from the one minute which was just as any other day, not warm, but not a noticeable cold, to the blocking of the suns rays, the dark and the cold!
I'll be honest, I thought nothing of this. The cloud had been so thick only 40 minutes before when I had walked into our building in Doncaster town centre, that I had discounted the chance of seeing the eclipse itself, and thought that these changes in the weather would be the only noticeable effects of the eclipse that I would feel.
That was the case for all of about 5 minutes, until my boss who had just glanced out of our office window noticed a man across the road, his camera aloft, looking to the sky, up the road on the way back out of the town centre.
My boss and I have very similar personalities, and she as well as I, took this a our cue to run downstairs, and out of the front door of our office, to join the man on the opposite side of the road.
I drove to work as I usually do, and the forecast of a visible eclipse was already looking doubtful. Even though the peak time in Yorkshire wasn't to be until around 9.35am, I felt at 8.30, that I would struggle to see this natural beauty that I had been looking forward to since its forecast weeks prior.
After almost giving up on even seeing the eclipse, I was sat in my office at work, and although cloud covered the sky, the time got nearer to the optimum viewing time forecasted by the weather presenters, and you could still see a difference in the sky above.
The sky turned from a grey, cloud filled view, to a pitch black horizon.
I'd been told about the eclipse before, about the true darkness, about the change in temperature, the noticeable cold. And true to form, the sky darkened, and I truly felt the cold, from the one minute which was just as any other day, not warm, but not a noticeable cold, to the blocking of the suns rays, the dark and the cold!
I'll be honest, I thought nothing of this. The cloud had been so thick only 40 minutes before when I had walked into our building in Doncaster town centre, that I had discounted the chance of seeing the eclipse itself, and thought that these changes in the weather would be the only noticeable effects of the eclipse that I would feel.
That was the case for all of about 5 minutes, until my boss who had just glanced out of our office window noticed a man across the road, his camera aloft, looking to the sky, up the road on the way back out of the town centre.
My boss and I have very similar personalities, and she as well as I, took this a our cue to run downstairs, and out of the front door of our office, to join the man on the opposite side of the road.
Sure enough, the man was right to have has camera pointed to the sky, because what we saw upon looking up, was the eclipse!
I wasted no time in joining the man who had alerted us to this sight, and I pointed my camera skywards.
My camera is nothing special, not at all, so I wasn't expecting anything remarkable. This was my first attempt at photographing something like this, and with my little camera, with a tiny 15x zoom, I thought that picturing something happening thousands of miles away, would need much more skill than my own.
Nevertheless, I pointed up, zoomed in, and shot.
I maybe spent 10 minutes outside, attempting to capture a picture which at least resembled something of what I could see looking up.
I would probably have stayed outside, just looking up in awe at the beauty of the eclipse for hours if I could, but unfortunately, the cloud once again engulfed the eclipse, and we decided be probably ought to go back and do some work.
Now if you've ever used a compact camera, you'll know that the preview shot which displays on the screen often looks nothing close to the actual shot you've taken.
Because of this, it wasn't until I got the pictures onto my computer in the office that I realised quite what I had managed to capture. Between the clouds, was a clear, bright crescent shape, formed as a result of the eclipse.
Now, I'm a member of the facebook generation, so I did what we do, and immediately got my pictures online.
What happened next really surprised me, because, as impressed as I was with my pictures, it was my first attempt at taking any sort of photo like this, and I never expected anyone else to be impressed by my pictures. But within 5 minutes of my photos going online, my desk phone rang. The man at the end of the phone was a reporter from the Doncaster Free Press newspaper, asking for permission to use my shots!
If I'm honest, my first attempt at "proper photo" really couldn't have gone much better!
I'm going to post a couple of my photos along with this article, please take a look, and I'd love to hear your comments and feedback!
Niall
