I will take any excuse to get outside and hike around and take some photographs. In case you hadn’t heard recently we experienced a total solar eclipse here in the United States. I am not an astrophotographer and I don’t typically photograph he night skies, but it was interesting.

As it turned out that path of totality crossed a large section of New York state. As I did some research it looked like it would be within a reasonable drive for me to get to a location where I could have the opportunity to experience totality during the eclipse. And from everything I was hearing and reading being in the path of totality is a completely different experience than being in any other part of the county when the eclipse occurs.

I started to think that I just wanted to be out on the trail hiking somewhere. Enjoy nature. Experience and eclipse. What could be better.

I was looking at maps. And as it turned out the path of totality was going to pass one of my favorite places to hike, that being a section of the Finger Lakes Trail. I started to envision hiking the Finger Lakes Trail and taking photographs.

I was looking at my Finger Lakes Trail Maps and the online versions to compare the path of totality to how the trail crossed the state. Thinking and developing my ideas. I didn’t really have any big goals for photographing the eclipse itself. I just wanted to be at a nice location in nature to see what would happen and enjoy the day.

I decided to go to Ontario County Park near Naples, New York. The park is at the northern end of the Bristol Hills branch of the Finger Lakes Trail. It would be the perfect spot to set up shop for the day.

I arrived early in the morning and the eclipse wasn’t until mid afternoon. I had plenty of time to hike around and explore and take photographs.

One of the reasons I chose to start at Ontario County Park was that it is at the top of a large hill and has a nice scenic view for photography in general and then should also allow for a good view of the eclipse. I started hiking around on the Finger Lakes Trail. I carried three different cameras with me and took a variety of photos of the natural area.

As I hiked I realized I forgot how steep it is up and down this hill. So I got a little more of a workout on my hike than I had anticipated. After a nice hike on the trail I walked around the park itself and photographed different aspects of the park.

I spent a lot of time thinking about photography nature and the eclipse. My main interest with the eclipse was to just see how the light changed as the sun was blocked out. I really wanted to capture the difference in the way the light looks during an eclipse.

That seemed like the perfect goal for me as a photographer. Photography is essentially just thinking about different ways to portray light and how light effects your subject. So as I walked around I thought about how I would want to compose a photograph.

I love trees and skylines. So I wanted to compose a shot with a tree an the skyline view from the park. I thought that would give me a good opportunity to showcase the changing light during the eclipse.

As it turned out, where I was ended up being almost complete cloud cover. We could not see the sun at all. But even though that was a little disappointing it leaned into what I wanted to do with my photography.

I did have a long lens to try and get a close up photo of the total eclipse if that opportunity presented itself, but that wasn’t the main goal for me. I was still able to showcase the change in light at the park as the sun was blocked out by the moon.

For my set up I had my small Sony mirrorless camera on a tripod low to the ground. And I also had my GoPro on a tripod to shoot video. I set both cameras up so they would have similar images. I framed a tree in the foreground and the sky off in the horizon.

I started recording with my GoPro. Then I took a series of images with my Sony camera. I didn’t think about it at the time, so I didn’t really shoot the still photos with any specific amount of time between shots. I just took a new photo each time the light began to look noticeably different. And then after the fact I realized I could put those together into a time lapse series to show the sky getting darker and then lighter again. And I was also able to speed up the video so that the passage of time as the sky gets dark and then light again happens faster.

I thought it was a pretty cool experience to see it get so dark even if we missed out on seeing the eclipse directly. Being able to see how it affected the environment around us was pretty stunning. It was so dark and cloudy that it even began to rain as the eclipse was happening.

Even though we didn’t get to see the full majesty of a total eclipse to was nice to see so many people and families out at the park waiting to enjoy this natural phenomenon.

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