Photographing the eclipse

• The scene, not the Sun. A phone cannot resolve the corona, but it does beautifully at what the big rigs miss: the crowd in half-light, the sunset ring around the horizon, faces at second contact. Those are the photographs you will keep.
• Crescent shadows through leaves, and any shadow-band ripples on pale ground: easy, safe, and stranger than any close-up.
• If you have a long lens and a solar filter, the partial phases and the diamond ring are the classic close-ups. They demand practice before the day, not on it.

1. 01 Set up before second contact

   Pick your frame while there is still light: wide, horizon in shot, people in the foreground. Turn the flash off and leave it off.

2. 02 Shoot video through totality

   One take, started just before 10:45:33, catches the light collapsing, the crowd, and the dark. It films itself while you watch with your eyes.

3. 03 Ignore the Sun itself

   A tiny white blob in a dark sky is what phones produce, and chasing a better one costs you the event. Let the dedicated rigs have it.

A certified solar filter for the partial phases, filter off during totality only, exposure bracketing because the corona spans a huge brightness range, and a rehearsal of the filter-off-filter-on move until it is automatic: that is the discipline in one sentence. NASA and the AAS both publish detailed technique guides, and the serious ones agree on the last rule: whatever the camera is doing at second contact, look up.