Photo Feature: Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024

November 26, 2024
The Spartan statue on the Michigan State University campus, silhouetted against a clear blue sky with the bright sun overhead. The surrounding trees frame the scene, and a dotted light trail appears in the sky, adding a dynamic element to the composition.

During the solar eclipse in April, College of Education photographer Trevor Hawks scouted out a place to set up with his camera. 

In front of campus’ most recognizable 10-foot tall, 1,500lb landmark, Hawks camped out with a bottle of water, a lawn chair and sunglasses for a timelapse where he snapped more than 1,400 individual frames. This image is a composite of 23 photos taken between 2:42 p.m. and 3:58 p.m. 

To create this image, Hawks first took a photo exposed for the statue. 

The Spartan statue on the Michigan State University campus, standing prominently against a clear blue sky with the bright sun shining above. The scene is framed by tall evergreen trees and brick structures in the background.

Then he set up his timelapse to take a photo every 10 seconds exposed for the sun. Those photos appeared completely black, other than the sun. 

A sequence of three images showing different phases of a solar eclipse at night, with the moon partially covering the sun. Each image captures the sun's bright rays radiating against the dark sky, with the visible crescent of light shifting slightly across the series

After exploring all of the photos in his editing software, Hawks decided on a cadence of about three minutes between shots over the most interesting hour and sixteen minutes of the eclipse.

To complete the image, he layered 23 photos together, used a blending mode to allow the statue and blue sky to shine through the black.

The final step was to crop square to share on social media and edit out a few pine branches begging for attention. 

The white box represents the cropped photo that was shared on social media. This photo became the College of Education’s highest performing Facebook post of all time with over 72,000 impressions and 1,000+ likes.

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