We talk a fair amount on the show about whether actually being somewhere is becoming ever more important in a world where AI can increasingly make the picture without requiring us to go anywhere near the experience. There are some things you see, and there are some things you experience, and a solar eclipse seems to belong firmly in the second camp. That’s what episode 543 is all about.
Picture by Photowalker: Marco Markovich
This week, millions of people across the Northern Hemisphere had good reason to stop what they were doing and look up. Here in the UK we saw a partial solar eclipse, as did much of Europe and parts of North America, while those fortunate enough to find themselves beneath the path of totality experienced something altogether stranger.
People who have witnessed totality often struggle to explain why it affects them so much. Perhaps it’s because all the familiar rules of daytime briefly seem to have been suspended. The light changes, shadows grow peculiar, and, as I noticed, animals and birds reacted to the sudden darkness, mostly with silence. And then, for a few minutes, the Sun disappears behind the Moon and its corona becomes visible around the edge.
Photowalker John Grindle documents the scene facing back to the bespectacled crowd (above and below).
I think there’s also something rather wonderful about thousands of complete strangers all stopping at once and staring at exactly the same thing.
Which seemed a very good reason to go back into The Photowalk archive this week for one of the most extraordinary stories ever told on the show.
Photographer Jon Carmichael didn’t simply want to witness a total solar eclipse. He wanted to photograph one from 39,000 feet aboard a commercial airliner!
That presented one or two complications.
He needed to calculate where the Moon’s shadow would be, work out which aircraft might cross it at the right moment, find the right flight and then somehow secure precisely the right seat on the aircraft. There was very little room for error because, unlike most photographic subjects, the eclipse wasn’t going to hang around while Jon reconsidered his composition.
What followed is a remarkable story of planning, persuasion, good fortune and of course, photography. It begins much earlier with the influence of a geography teacher, takes us several miles above the Earth and eventually produces a photograph bought by Elton John.
Even if you’ve heard Jon tell parts of the story elsewhere, including in his TED Talk, I think this one deserves another outing, given the special nature of this week. It is one of those genuine dine-out-on-it-for-the-rest-of-your-life stories, and Jon tells it brilliantly.
It’s a mailbag week too.
From our Facebook community, Pascal Bernandon writes and photographs a story called Shared Loneliness, while the mailbag takes us in a few different directions. Per Birkhaug finds his photographic ‘why’ with a little assistance from three reindeer, and Gert Van Cole gets me thinking about why so many photographers appear unable to confine their creativity to photography alone.
We also officially begin a new feature called Moments.
I’ve mentioned the idea before, but from this week it becomes part of the show: photographers talking about particular moments in their lives and work rather than simply the pictures they made. A moment of joy, perhaps. A moment when something went wrong. A moment when they knew they were in exactly the right place. The memories behind photography that may never appear in a portfolio but stay with us nevertheless.
And appropriately enough, the first voice we hear belongs to next week’s guest, travel photographer Ewen Bell.
So this week’s Photowalk moves from people standing outside staring towards the Sun to one photographer who decided he could improve his chances by getting considerably closer to it.
The new episode of The Photowalk is out now.
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