Unless you live under a rock, you undoubtedly heard about the total solar eclipse that traversed the continental United States on April 8, 2024. I was lucky enough to be able to sneak away to a remote corner of Oklahoma to witness and photograph this astronomical spectacle. Today, I’d like to share how I planned and shot the first total solar eclipse I’ve witnessed.

Planning the shoot

I would love to tell you that I spent months, even years, planning to get out to shoot the total solar eclipse, but this isn’t true. Honestly, I didn’t think I could make a trip to shoot this work with some of the other commitments I had at the time. As such, I hadn’t planned a trip to shoot the eclipse. I got extremely lucky, however, and everything aligned (pun intended) to allow me to make the trip to shoot it.

There was just one issue - this all came together only a few weeks before the eclipse was set to occur. This left me scrambling to pick a location, find lodging, and get all of the equipment I needed together. Fortunately, everything fell into place.

Finding a location

Naturally, the first task was to find a location to shoot. Luckily, there are about 1 billion maps online that will show you the path of totality. One such example is this one from NASA.

The path of totality for the 2024 total solar eclipse.

My first instinct was to try to find some sort of cool landscape along this path. After all, who wouldn’t want to shoot such an amazing phenomenon in a picturesque landscape? After pontificating for a bit, however, I realized that any such landscape that I picked would be swarming with people. Additionally, I knew that I was primarily interested in shooting a zoomed-in shot of the eclipse, meaning that the location didn’t really matter at all.

So, I set about trying to find the most out-of-the-way location I could. That’s when I noticed that the path of totality crossed right through an obscure corner of southeast Oklahoma. Utilizing the 2024 total solar eclipse layer in Gaia GPS, I located some obscure wildlife management areas that I figured might fit the bill. I wrote them down in my notes and planned to find the finalized spot the morning of the eclipse.

Locating obscure wildlife management areas in southeast Oklahoma with Gaia GPS — View of Gaia GPS with the eclipse layer turned on. The purple color indicates that we are looking at an area that is in the path of totality.

Lodging

With an area nailed down, I needed to find a place to stay. This is where I had a real problem - This was a last-minute plan and lodging was scarce, to say the least. I mean, just look at this analysis of Airbnb rentals during the time of the eclipse that AirDNA did:

Analysis of Airbnb rentals during the 2024 total solar eclipse

Not surprisingly, everything in the path of totality was either booked solid or priced at an unreasonably high rate. Not one to give up, however, I zoomed out a bit… literally!

While examining Google Maps, I noticed that the abandoned town of Picher, Oklahoma, was located right in the northeast corner of the state. I’ve long wanted to visit this location, and it was only a five-hour drive from the locations I had identified. So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I booked a hotel near Picher and planned to drive down for the eclipse super early on Monday morning.

The gear

At this point, I had a location, and I had lodging. Now, all that I needed was the necessary gear to make this shoot happen. Here’s a complete breakdown of the gear I used to shoot the 2024 total solar eclipse:

Camera Body: For this shoot, I took along my trusty Canon EOS R. In addition to the camera, I brought several spare batteries and a couple of SD Cards.
Lens: I knew I wanted to shoot a zoomed-in composition of the eclipse, so I brought my Sigma 100-400mm lens with a tripod mount lens collar.
Tripod: For the tripod, I brought along my Sirui W-2204 tripod with a Sirui ballhead. This setup has been serving me well for several years now.
Tracker: Thanks to the rotation of the Earth, the sun would constantly be moving in my frame without a tracker. As such, I decided to bring along my iOptron SKyGuider Pro tracker along with a William Optics Extension Bar to ensure the eclipse would stay perfectly centered in my frame.
Solar Filter: I opted to go with a dedicated solar filter instead of a strong ND filter for this. After a fair bit of research, I landed on one of these filters from Mr. Star Guy.

Out in the field, everything looked like this once I had it all set up:

My setup for photographing the 2024 total solar eclipse

The day of the shoot

After a couple of weeks of frantic planning, the weekend before the eclipse had finally arrived. I woke up early on Saturday morning and started heading east from my home near Denver, Colorado. After spending a couple of days shooting abandonment along the route in Kansas and Oklahoma, Monday—the day of the eclipse—had finally arrived. I got up early and drove toward my planned destination near Idabel, Oklahoma.

I was delighted to find that I had awoken early enough to avoid all of the eclipse traffic. Furthermore, I was delighted by the clear skies I saw along the drive!

Around 9 am, I was finally only about an hour from my planned destination. Driving green, winding backroads, I noticed a small offshoot called Three Sticks that I had decided to check out. What I found was a spot with only a couple of people and that was in the path of totality. I decided to scrap my original destination and just set up for the eclipse here.

Aligning the tracker

For the most part, setting up the camera equipment went how you’d expect. The one exception was getting my tracker aligned.

Normally, you would align your tracker to the north star using the polar alignment scope. Unfortunately, this is not an option during the day, and I was not able to get to the location the night before to pre-align everything, which left me with a bit of a dilemma.

What I ultimately decided to do was to use a compass to find north and align the axis of my tracker to it the best I could. This would be a very rough alignment, to say the least, but I figured that an extremely precise alignment probably wasn’t too necessary for the sun. Luckily, I turned out to be right!

The wait

At this point, everything was set up and ready to go. There was nothing left to do other than wait a few hours for the eclipse to actually begin.

This period of waiting had plenty of ups and downs with the clouds. The skies would go from completely clear to nearly fully overcast. To say I was concerned would be a massive understatement!

Clouds threatening to block the view of the eclipse — These clouds started rolling in shortly before the eclipse began. Shortly after I took this, the skies became completely overcast.

Despite my concerns, I did not drive all this way to give up. I waited it out and hoped for the best.

The moment arrives

After a few hours of waiting, the time had finally come. The clouds parted as the moon started to slowly creep along the surface of the sun. As the spectacle continued to unfold, I began to shoot. With the solar filter on, my exposure was set at ISO 100, f/16, 1/8 seconds. I captured this image of the scene creeping toward totality:

The sun as it was about 50% eclipsed by the moon

Totality

Finally, after much anticipation, the crux of the show had arrived. The moon continued to slowly inch its way across the surface of the sun until there was almost no sunlight left.

The light on the ground started to get a bizarre look to it as the wind picked up and the frogs and crickets started to come alive thinking it was dusk. Finally, the sky erupted with the view of the sun’s corona. I quickly removed my solar filter and adjusted my exposure to capture the scene.

Totality during the 2024 total solar eclipse

This amazing spectacle lasted for a little over 3 minutes before the sun started to slowly creep back into view. Just as the moon began to clear the path of the sun, another amazing scene unfolded-the diamond ring of light erupting from the edge of the moon. Ironically, the clouds I had been so concerned with up to this point ended up making this shot a lot more unique.

The diamond ring as the moon began to clear the path of the sun

An experience to remember

Needless to say, this trip was an experience to remember. This was the first total solar eclipse that I’ve had the chance to witness. It also happens to be the last total eclipse that will occur over the continental U.S. until 2045!

I’m extremely grateful that I had the opportunity to witness this marvel, and I already have the itch to see another one. Perhaps Alaska will be calling my name in 2033!

How I Shot a Total Solar Eclipse