Viewing a Solar Eclipse: Ancient Wisdom Works...
Viewing a partial eclipse of the sun is a bit hit and miss in London. The big one in 1999 happened before I got into photography and when there was one around 2014 I sourced special foil to create a sun-safe filter. I was all ready to get cool shots but the sky filled with grey cloud and and put paid to that bright idea. The one on August 13, 2026 was nice and clear but I'd mislaid the sunsafe filter from years ago and hadn't been sufficiently organised to order any more in time.
The answer was the simple projection of the sun through a small aperture onto a white background. It's simple physics first described by the ancient Chinese roughly 4,000 years ago. I'd seen it work on the 1999 eclipse, this time I had a clear sky and cameras to hand.
I also tried the colander trick for the first time and found it worked pretty well - I particularly liked the way it projected multiple images.
What's strange about an eclipse is the way the light changes - even though the sun looked full in the sky, the shadows seemed to become darker and everything seemed to take on a mysterious late-autumnal look. It doesn't last very long - about 10-15 minutes - but it looks and feels very strange.
Apparently the ancient Chinese believed a solar eclipse was caused by a huge celestial dragon trying to swallow the sun. The custom was to scream and shout to scare the monster away and, of course, the strategy was always a success. There wasn't any shouting or screaming that I could hear in my corner of London but I spotted some other people doing the colander trick.