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One of the favourite places locally, for my I.R. photography is Everton Cemetery, here in Liverpool. This Victorian Cemetery, although not in the ward of Everton, is steeped in local history and offers rich pickings for I.R. workers.
On Thursday 20/03/10 was a solar eclipse, which was to be visible here in the UK… it was due to be at its height of coverage at around 9:30.am, so I arrived at the Cemetery for 8:30.am to have plenty of time to see and hopefully photograph it. I brought my Nikon D7k, converted to a 590nm for full colour, and a Heliopan 780nm filter to capture the celestial event. Of course, this also meant I could hold the filter to my eye and check on the progress of the eclipse.
As I came through the gates, it was a real ‘blue-sky’ day with a few hazy clouds, and this gave me an opportunity to take a few of my preferred shots… I had Elle with me (our Border Terrier) as when we are at the cemetery, she loves to chase the rabbits, although she’s too old to catch one these days, it does give her a lot of exercise and fun…
I made my way around to where I wanted to set up and wait for the best eclipse shot, as I wanted the old Cemetery Chapel Spire to be dominant in the final I.R. image. so I waited…
At around 9:15.am… the ‘blue-sky’ day suddenly turned very overcast, and cold. At one point I thought I was going to lose the shot completely, but I managed to get the one I was after… I had heard a collection of crows and saw them fly over, but through the camera with the 780nm filter in place I could only just make out the eclipse… the crow in the image was a bonus, and makes the image work…
The Eclipse
After it was all over… we walked around the Cemetery a few times over, giving Elle a chance to chase more of the rabbits, and a few grey squirrels, whilst I rattled off a few more shots, before heading home to edit the days shots…
Another visit to Everton Cemetery on my blog, to research a little known piece of Liverpool History, can be found…. HERE.