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Plans to photograph the solar eclipse started in late 2023.
Where should we go to capture it above a lighthouse?
I’ve been shooting beacons at night for the last 10 years for the United States Lighthouse Society’s USA Stars & Lights project. We travel the country in the project’s RV, donated by the Society’s educator Elinor DeWire and her husband, Jon. They named it “Ruthie” after her late mother, and since taking delivery we’ve been working on a children’s book to be called Ruthie’s Big Lighthouse Adventure. I’d left a page in the manuscript for the eclipse, all that was needed was the actual event.
With the path of totality starting over lighthouses in Ohio and heading east along Lake Erie, it initially seemed there were plenty of choices. However, a ten-hour drive was just too far. To make the shot work, it had to be a lighthouse with a good westerly view at 3:20 in the afternoon. Most of the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario lighthouses were on the water with few having the necessary view of the western sky. Beautiful lighthouses like Marblehead, Fairport Harbor, Lorain, and Ashtabula had little to no room to make it work. Erie Land or Presque Isle might be possible, but it was also a long drive. Buffalo was an option, but that’s six hours drive and the Buffalo Main Lighthouse hasn’t much room to the east or in a good position for the mid-afternoon event. Thirty Mile Point sits only feet from Lake Ontario and might not have a good angle, plus I’d be willing to bet the park was already booked up for the eclipse. The two Sodus Bay lights also lack the angle.
My sights were turned to Lake Champlain, and Windmill Point Light in Vermont had the elements: in the path of totality, plenty of surrounding land to get the angle, and a bonus of being on private land. I’d photographed it about 8 years ago, and I reached out to owner Rob Clark. He thought it was a great idea, and welcomed us onto the property with Ruthie.
With my niece, Jennifer along to assist, we planned to run as many as five cameras. Like millions of others, experiencing the eclipse was simply fantastic. There were just the three of us at Windmill Point, and although high thin clouds arrived about an hour before the eclipse started, they weren’t thick enough to obscure the celestial show.
Totality was a fantastic three minutes!
This story appeared in the
Mar/Apr 2024 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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