Edinburgh Eclipses

Written out of jealousy

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Wee Jamie was a mile away from the castle but a long lens brings him right next to it - this was about 250mm

I am weak, and suffer from a jealous heart. The recent eclipse shenanigans across the Atlantic made me yearn for the same here, but instead I can only play a reprise of eclipses past. My first serious attempts to capture an eclipse were in March 2015. I’d been experimenting a lot with using a long lens and getting people to stand in carefully planned positions to capture them in front of the sun, moon, or just bits of the city.

Jamie stood 300ft above us on Salisbury Crags

Wee Jamie was a very willing accomplice, agreeing to be a distant model for our group of photographers. Once we had arranged our plan with him at the bottom of the crags he somehow managed to appear at the top before we had all managed to get our various cameras, long telephoto lenses, tripods, remote triggers and filters prepared. He was a racing snake back then but has filled out a little since, to bring himself to prime condition for his upcoming betrothal.

We used mobiles to communicate, and gave various instructions to Jamie to move position…to jump…to stick his arms up…to ask those nearby folk to join in too. At first we cursed the clouds that were speeding in from the west, but soon realised that they actually made life a bit easier for exposing images, and then we began cursing when the clouds disappeared. There was a lot of cursing.

I loved doing these shots and we all got unique images, but there was a problem. Unless you explain what it is, people don’t understand what they are looking at. The images fail at that most basic principle of photography - you shouldn’t need to explain what it is - it should do all the explaining by itself.

Later that year we had a lunar eclipse, where the moon was cast into the Earth’s shadow - it was much higher in the sky so we had to find a different place to shoot with more flexibility for moving around. Up on a steep slope in the Pentland Hills Jamie and I both had to keep adjusting our position as the moon moved across the sky. This time Jamie wore a Batman outfit and rode a bike. Did I mention this was about 3 in the morning?

The “blood” effect of the eclipse was quite subtle really and…again…if you don’t have it pointed out to you…the fact this was an eclipse is not obvious without a caption. Maybe this is true of all eclipse photos really. I’ll need to think about that one and get back to you.

This one was termed the “Blood Wolf” moon, another lunar eclipse in January 2019, and I was determined to set it against something iconic. You don’t get much more iconic than Edinburgh Castle and the flagpole made a perfect lollipop stick. It was a really cold January night with frost on the ground, so I was trying to convey that in the mood of the wider shot.

A few months later the clouds were again a source of much wailing, f’ing and blinding when the Buck Moon lunar eclipse came along. Careful planning is next to useless when the weather doesn’t follow the plan, so it required a lot of patience and moving locations a few times to get any success. I managed to grab a couple of fleeting glimpses with our castle and with the New Town tenements of Comely Bank Avenue.

This image was a few seconds long, so you can see the headlight trails of a couple of cars and that ghostly figure down the bottom left who had stood still for just part of the shot. When you see old archive photos of city streets you will often see ghostly figures and smeared areas because they were taken over a number of seconds using a tripod. Generally speaking I shoot long-lens moon and sun images much faster than this to try and preserve the shape and the detail on the moon surface, but this night the clouds were making it difficult to see either so I opted for getting the foreground better exposed and with less “noise”. The important detail was the shadowed area which was the Earth’s shadow.

All of the above shots made it into the national press in various newspapers but without being told that they were eclipse images would anyone have the slightest idea? Maybe the satisfaction should come from the documentation of special and unique occasions, rather than creating images that speak entirely for themselves.

I’ll finish with one of my favourite moon shots - not an eclipse image at all - but one that speaks more to me than many. It evokes a whole range of emotions - especially for me knowing that the models are my young son and his friend sitting on a grassy hillside staring up at the night sky. Let me know if it speaks to you at all, and what it says if it does.

The two Jamies

Someone emailed to suggest I add a wee tips payment option - for those of you who don’t want to subscribe but would like to offer something as a “Cheers mate, enjoyed that” option. So here it is.