The 2024 NYC Partial Eclipse

There was a brief window of time — around 3am the week prior as I paced back and forth — where I considered going into the path of totality to photograph the eclipse. My plan was to fly up to Rochester, NY for a few days but tickets were getting really expensive (economy tickets were near the price of first class) and hotels were quickly booking up. So I settled on photographing the partial eclipse from NYC.

My main concern was making sure the image sensor on my camera would survive; I had just got this new OM-1 Mark II camera and I didn’t want the pixels on the new camera to randomly go dark because I decided to point it at the sun unprotected. Buying a sun filter is surprisingly fraught. Some filters are rated for being pointed at the sun but some are not; and they both will call themselves sun filters. I ended up ordering the NiSi Solar Filter Pro rated to drop 16.5 stops and it ended up working extremely well.

I sat up on Pier 25 on the Hudson. I went early because I didn’t know how many people would be there and I wanted to steak my spot out as not to block anyone’s view. By the time the eclipse started, the entire pier was full of office workers and students. It was pretty exciting seeing it with all those people. Quite a few people came up and we chatted. My camera was able to get a great view of the sun so ended up being some people’s best view of the eclipse.

After the eclipse, I found this little inquisitive sparrow and had to take their photo.