dougs

Solar Eclipse Watching Cooper Mountain Nature Park • Beaverton, Oregon August 21, 2017

I’ve been wont to mutter recently, “Who the heck scheduled a solar eclipse on my day off??” Because of my limited amount of paid leave, I plot my days off for an entire calendar year in advance. When in December I scheduled my August 2017 Mental Health Monday, I had no inkling that a solar eclipse fell on that day.

In the months ahead of the eclipse I read the hype – and mainly tried to figure out how to keep a low profile and not get stuck in traffic or some other timewaster. I was not planning to watch the eclipse at all. I’ve seen one solar and one lunar eclipse, and I wasn’t excited about another. When I told Debbie of my plan to avoid the eclipse, she was shocked. “I’m picking up eclipse glasses from the Audobon Society today. I’ll bring back a pair for you!”

“Don’t bother,” I said, “I won’t use them.” She tried a couple more times to convince me to participate. I was adamant in my refusal.

To my surprise, though, on Friday I had a thought… maybe I could do some photography of happenings around the eclipse… and I thought of what could be a perfect location: Cooper Mountain Nature Park at the top of Cooper Mountain.

Beaverton is about 200 feet above sea level. My house on a hill is about 330 feet above sea level. The park near the top of Cooper Mountain is about 750 feet above sea level and has a nice, wide view of the Tualatin Valley and the Chehalem Mountains. And… Cooper Mountain is only three miles away – less than 10 minutes – from my home. I can get there without crossing a single major street.

My main concern was parking – if the park was full early, I’ll take that as a sign that photos were not meant to be. Monday morning I packed up my cameras and left the house shortly before 8 am, arriving at the park at about 8:05 am. The small parking lot was not quite full – there were still a half dozen or so open spaces in the main lot. The overflow lot was largely empty. Excellent.

Besides the cameras, I brought Kanna (my iPad) and Nano-chan (my MacBook Air) so that I could do some work while waiting for the eclipse. I had hoped to get one of the picnic tables under cover of the Cooper Mountain Nature House, but all the tables had already been claimed. I was a bit surprised that the full edge of the patio was lined with folding chairs. It didn’t even occur to me to bring a chair. No matter. I found a really good spot between the playground and the patio. I sat and did some writing on my laptop. Eventually I put everything away so that I could concentrate on photos.





Because my bags and computer were holding my place, I didn’t want to wander too far from them. I trusted that no one was going to grab them and run off, but I did want to keep them in sight and shouting distance. That limited my roaming to an extent – not a handicap, though. People kept coming. The overflow parking lot filled up, and people parked on both shoulders of Kemmer Road for quite a ways. People were still wandering in at 15 minutes before totality. Crazy. Fortunately, there were open lanes for maneuvering. I tried to make sure I didn’t block anyone’s camera as I was flitting about.

I chatted with some of the other photographers and videographers. The video was a historical documentary. One photographer was photographing for THPRD to show how popular their facilities are. (I do love THPRD.) At one point I ended up in a cluster of four Nikon DSLR photographers, which was cool. I didn’t expect Nikons to outnumber Canons. I talked with only one Canon photographer.

I brought both Nikon D810s. One was fitted with the AF-S Nikkor 105mm f/1.4E for more intimate photos. The other D810 had the AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4G lens for wide views. The two-camera setup worked well, and I was able to switch quickly between the two.

The photo exercise was a bonus event. I didn’t have any expectations, and if I came away with even one decent photo, the outing would be successful. I wasn’t photographing so much that I missed the experience of the totality (well… here… totality minus some fraction of a percent…). One reason I chose Cooper Mountain was so I could see the orange sunset band around the entire horizon – and that indeed was pretty cool.





After totality, the sky brightened seemingly rapidly, and I didn’t stick around to take more pictures. I wanted to beat the traffic jam – and I accomplished that. On the drive back home I saw quite a few other groups who had watched the eclipse – including one large group in the middle of a field at a grade school not far from my house. I’m glad I didn’t choose that field – you couldn’t see any horizon from there.

Of the 250 photos I took, I chose about 50 to post to Zenfolio as Solar Eclipse 2017. One of the complications in processing the photos is that the camera autoexposed for all lighting conditions – making all pictures look like a sunny day. (That’s what happens when you have a camera that can see in the dark.) I had to counteradjust exposure to reflect the actual look in the minutes before, during, and after totality.

One thing… I neglected to sync the clocks on the D810s. The cameras run fast. D810/302 was 6m 29s fast, and D810/306 was 2m 37s fast. Fortunately, Lightroom has a function for editing Capture Date/Time, and the function can do those offset adjustments down to the second. Whew!

The plan was for me to arrive on site when the show opened at 11:00 am on Sunday. We’d round up the framebuilders and have a short photo shoot.

I arrived at Cathedral Park Place at 10:40 am – intentionally a little early. I wanted to first take a few quick photos in the area.

First… Moonstruck Chocolate… which is right across the street from Cathedral Park Place…

Moonstruck Chocolate Company • Portland, Oregon

Second… the St. Johns Bridge from Cathedral Park. For as many times as I’ve been across the St. Johns Bridge, amazingly I’d never been in Cathedral Park. The park is a quick walk from Cathedral Park Place (if you couldn’t tell from the name), so I thought I’d just pop over and grab a few shots. I didn’t pack a super wide lens – just the AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G. I could barely fit the bridge in from the park.

St. Johns Bridge from Cathedral Park

I made it back to the bicycle show in plenty of time. While Dave Levy rounded up the framebuilders, I figured out where in the gallery we could take pictures. Although I dislike shooting in front of a wall, that seemed to be the best option.

I took a group photo… then individual photos – a product photo and a headshot photo for each framebuilder. The entire process took 40 minutes – from 11:20 am to 12:00 noon (although there was about 10 minutes of dead space near the end). For the gallery photos I had brought the AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G, which is a good lens for posed studio portraits, especially when a wider angle is needed for products such as bicycles and for large group photos.

OHBS 2017 Participants

Christopher Igleheart • Igleheart Customs

Sim Works (Japan)

Dwan Shepard • Co-Motion Cycles

Chad Smeltzer • Smeltzer Bikes

I packed up and did a 15-minute sweep of the venue using the 24-70mm lens to capture wide views. I was finished by 12:20 pm and on my way back to Beaverton.

2017 Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show • Cathedral Park Place

Now all I had to do was to do post-procesing on the 860 photos I took for the show. It actually took quite a while – starting on Sunday the 13th and ending on Sunday the 20th. I selected about 150 photos that I posted to the OHBS 2017 Photo Gallery at Zenfolio.

So. Totally. Annoying. Sunday afternoon and evening… and Monday afternoon (and evening, so far), my internet connection has been down at home. And I wanted to get a lot done today (Monday) on my day off. Yesterday I used only my iPad, but today I have to connect Belldandy to the web, so I’m running a personal hotspot on my iPhone. Thumbs up to Verizon. Thumbs down to Comcast.

The internet connection was back up at 1 am this morning… and it lasted to about noon. We’ve had this dance with Comcast before. :(