On the 9th April, the last day before the eclipse, we found ourselves in a diner bar on Beale St in Memphis, Tennessee. The forecast had been poor for the whole of the US continent for the last couple of weeks and it was raining. It was raining so hard, the TV was tuned into a station that played just the weather and the guy on it was advising people to bring their cars in because hailstorms were forecast. Hail, it would seem, is different here to anything I’ve been familiar with.

I didn’t sleep much that night, waking up to the latest forecast – and they were good! Later that day would be best around Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi, a two and a half hour’s drive north. The drive was through fog later that morning, but with around 50 miles to go, it cleared up beautifully and but for a few high cirrus clouds, the sky was bright blue and warm.

I set up the camera on the tripod and put the Baader solar filter over the primary lens. I also put the GoPro on a small tripod to take a Timelapse. At 12 noon, first contact. A few minutes later, the thinnest slice of the Sun was taken off the south eastern limb and for the next two hours the Moon moved relentlessly in front of the face of the Sun. You can see in the full length timelapse how little the overall light was affected but twenty minutes out from totality, it started to dim slightly. The final couple of minutes an eerie light was cast all around us. At 20 seconds past 2pm: totality. The Sun flickered out.

Moments before I had taken off the solar filter and let the camera adjust automatically. It was my first eclipse and no one wants to be messing about with balancing exposure in a rapidly dimming environment manually. The diamond ring first, then totality was upon us. Blackness, quiet. The wind died down. The whooping and clapping stopped and people spoke in whispers. I got a few shots off, but mostly I wanted to just be present.

There was a distinct flare at the southern limb which, which was later seen to be a solar prominence three times higher than the Earth and glowing distinctly reddish in hue as the hydrogen burnt off. Images later showed there to be a few of these, most noticeably at the south eastern limb (So, 6 and 4 o’clock). Venus visible to the lower right, Jupiter to the left. This was in the middle of a sunny day, remember.

A few minutes later and the diamond ring sparkled us out of our reverie. People – myself included – were in an awe-struck oddly post trance like state. We hugged and shook hands like we had truly witnessed something together. Emails swapped. Right, pack up and head to the bar for a drink.

Back in the UK, I have just been told the BBC have included my image of totality in their ‘Sky At Night’ magazine.