The first photo of the solar phenomenon is more contrived than it seems. I had hoped to catch the strange effect in the sky — something akin to a “sun-dog” — with my large Sony camera, bracketing exposures over a dozen EVs, while my daughter caught the obscured solar disc at the same exact moment using her iPhone and a recommended filter. In fact, I later determined that we fell slightly out of sync…she was early for full occultation and I was perhaps a little late, but the composite image does achieve an approximation of the actual visual experience of the location and event. Incidentally, my photo was taken from the tunnel-like entrance to West Hill Place, a very strange pseudo-Georgian cul-de-sac that can only be reached from Charles Street and the rest of Beacon Hill by walking all the way through and out the back of an old parking garage — always a rather though-the-wardrobe-into-Narnia experience.

The second photo was taken in the Public Garden a few minutes after totality with my phone, through the branches of a Metasequoia glyptostroboides (dawn redwood) as I walked home while wondering if I had fried the sensor in my expensive professional camera for nothing.