So…this is the thwarted Eclipse…so much thick cloud cover, we could barely see the planes on final approach into London City Airport from our vantage point – this is the view from the entrance to East India Dock on the River Thames.

This is the vision of what I wanted to take (as well as close ups) – in fact, the sun would have been more over the Thames than the O2 in the diagram, but you get the idea – I would have taken bracketed shots every 5 minutes and then super-imposed the shots in Photoshop, but the weather meant that we could not even see a glimpse of the sun at all – we did persevere in case the cloud broke up (and it did eventually, but not until around 12:30…long after I had given up and the maximum had passed) – we did notice it get darker and saw automatic lights come on, but that was it.

So I did take some long exposure shots of the Thames – with the ND10 filter, this was a 39 second exposure (and even then somewhat under-exposed – that was adjusted in Lightroom) – not quite what I had in mind for the day, but some you win, some you lose – onwards to the next eclipse!

My thanks to Nina, Steve and the other people that were down near East India Dock hoping to get a glimpse of this event – It was bitterly cold and I am sure I would have given up earlier if others hadn’t been around!

Technical details

Nikon D80; 39s;f/18@18mm (Nikkor 18-70mm;f/3.5-4.5;Stock lens);ISO100 – ND6 filter – Tripod – Post processing in LR5;

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