COPPERAS COVE, Texas — Rita Hogan has been a photographer for over 20 years, and she’s preparing to capture the total solar eclipse from a park in Copperas Cove.
Her first piece of advice would be to study the timing of the eclipse to find the best location for your photo.
“Since the eclipse will be happening around noon, we are going to have really good light here in order to capture it,” Hogan said.
The eclipse begins with a small notch slowly appearing along one edge of the sun as time passes the moon will cove more and more as the crescent of the sun things the moon shadow will appear.
“We get full totality here the last time in October we did not,” Hogan said.
As Hogan is preparing to capture the moment the night before she is making sure she has charged batteries, a clean lens, and an empty memory card, camera, lens, tripod, shutter use, and solar filter are recommended, it’s important to protect your equipment.
“The last time eclipse in October I took 500 shots to capture 1 composite photo,” Hogan said.
Although cellphones have filters, she doesn’t advise anyone to try and shoot with it in her experience the lens won’t allow enough light to come through to be able to capture it in detail with the thick filter you will need.
“If you have a regular point and shoot camera, they do have lens that will magnetically attach to your lens," Hogan said.
Consider bracketing your shots so you don’t miss anything you can capture the eclipse in different exposure levels take a series of photos at various stages.
“For intense astro-photographers into hobbyists, they have this sky watcher head on top of an Orion tripod that you can use," Hogan said.
"What it does is you set the settings of your location and then you face it toward the sun and put your camera on here and then it was automatically tracks the sun across the sky for you."
