The Eclipse
When the Light Changed · Torre de El Salvador · Teruel
I photographed cautiously, stealing quick frames from behind the brick pillars, then retreating into their shadow.
The Eclipse · When the Light Changed · Torre de El Salvador · Teruel · August 12, 2026
For almost a year, I had been thinking about where I wanted to be for the eclipse. There were plenty of possibilities around Teruel, but in the end I chose somewhere very familiar to me: the Torre del Salvador. We climbed the steps of the tower and were lucky enough to have a private viewing from the top with just a few friends. From there, we could see people beginning to appear on rooftops and terraces across the city, everyone waiting for the same thing. And then it began. Slowly, the sun started to disappear and the crescent became thinner and thinner. The light changed. The excitement grew. After so much anticipation, we were finally watching something we had talked about for months happening right in front of us.
I didn't take too many risks with the photographs. I spent much of the eclipse tucked behind the brick pillars of the tower, only moving the camera out briefly to quickly take an image before pulling it back again. I wasn't prepared to risk either my eyesight or my camera for a photograph, so I took far fewer images than I normally would. And then, with barely a minute to go before the full eclipse, a huge cloud moved directly in front of the sun. That was it.
I would love to say I took it philosophically, but I didn't. I was incredibly disappointed. After waiting an entire year, thinking about where to photograph it, changing my mind countless times and finally choosing this particular view over Teruel, we missed the moment we had come to see. Sometimes life simply doesn't happen as planned. So I don't have the photograph I had imagined for all those months. But I do have these.
The crescent sun. The strange changing light. People scattered across the rooftops of Teruel. Friends beside me at the top of a Mudéjar tower. The anticipation, the excitement and, yes, even that enormous cloud that arrived at exactly the wrong moment. They aren't the photographs I planned. But they are photographs of what actually happened. And perhaps that is a more honest way to remember it.
Look Closely...
If you look closely, you may notice a tiny crescent of light hidden within a few of these photographs. It isn't the eclipse reflected on the tower, but a small optical ghost created inside my camera lens. As the light from the partially eclipsed sun passed through the lens, internal reflections reproduced its crescent shape elsewhere in the image.
Normally, lens flare is something photographers try to avoid. This time, I rather love that it is there: a tiny, accidental echo of the eclipse, hiding in the photographs.
Meanwhile, in Javalambre
Two days later, I happened to run into an acquaintance who works for CEFCA here in Teruel. While we had been watching from the Torre del Salvador, he had been high in the Sierra de Javalambre at the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre, 1,957 metres above sea level and right in the path of totality. He told me about the hundreds of people who had gathered there, the visitors and scientists who had travelled to Javalambre for the eclipse, and the calls and congratulations they were receiving after the extraordinary images, videos and international coverage of the event.
And suddenly I had tears in my eyes. I was so genuinely thrilled for them. These are people who have dedicated their professional lives to looking at and trying to understand the universe, and after all the preparation and anticipation, their moment had finally arrived. And the skies had cooperated. I looked at him and said, “This was your World Cup.” A World Cup that comes around perhaps once in thirty years. He loved that, because it really was. The European Space Agency broadcast the eclipse live from Javalambre to viewers around the world, and among those who travelled there was Brian May, Queen's legendary guitarist and an astrophysicist himself. May also signed a guitar for my acquaintance's daughter, a former student of mine who now plays in a band. He showed me a photograph of her with May, holding the signed guitar and looking absolutely thrilled. I know how much that guitar, and that moment, meant to her.
While our little group had been standing at the top of the Torre del Salvador staring at the enormous cloud that had arrived at precisely the wrong moment, just a short distance away something extraordinary was happening for Teruel. For once, I didn't mind at all that somebody else had got the photograph. I was simply incredibly happy that they had.