The disappointment of not seeing a rare eclipse because of cloud cover over Washington State pushed me to make a last-minute road trip to Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula. Being from Northern New Mexico, where the eclipse was best seen, energized me to make the two-hour drive. I couldn’t stand all the Facebook updates from relatives and friends about their plans to see the celestial event, knowing all I’d see was gray.

The small town of Sequim sits in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains and is known by some locals as the “blue hole” of often gray Western Washington.

Well, upon arrival I was disappointed that the event was also not really visible there. But it was a nice Sunday family road trip.

Just as we were about to give up, the crescent-shaped sun became visible, filtered by high clouds. I frantically pulled over on a dead-end country road, set up my gear and made a few photographs as the window of opportunity quickly closed. As I took about a dozen photos my family watched the eclipse through a pair of welders masks.

The technical stuff: The photo was made with a 400mm lens with a 1.4x extender, 1/1250th sec at at f32. The eclipse filtered through clouds actually took away about 10 stops of light so a neutral density filter was not needed.

Here is a photo gallery featuring photos from the eclipse as seen around the world.

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