I was away on vacation and only returned right before Shabbos, so please forgive me for not answering before now.
First of all, I was not in South Carolina. I have not set foot in South Carolina for at least 35 years. Oh and the sky was clear where I was.
As to your actual question —
First of all, you can’t state unequivocly that my picture will be the same as anyone else’s. There are two main ways to photograph a total eclipse. You can photograph a “big sun” where the sun is the only object in the frame. You would do this using a long lens (preferably at least 400mm). However, you could also capture a landscape shot with the total eclipse using a shorter lens. In such a case, my photo would almost certainly be different from anyone else’s (unless they happened to be standing right next to me).
As it is, I went with the “big sun” type of photo. Truth to tell, my primary goal was to experience the total solar eclipse. However, as long as I was there, there was no way I wasn’t going to try to photograph it as well.
As for it being similar to many people’s pictures, so what?
1. I enjoy the process of creating photographs, regardless if it’s the same picture as anyone else’s.
2. It presents a unique opportunity for me to photograph the sun in a way that most of us do not see it.
3. I don’t really care if other people take the same photograph. There are umpteen million photographs of the Empire State Building, and yet I shoot it anyway.
4. Even if my photo is the same as everyone else’s straight out of the camera, there are some techniques that I can use regarding bracketing, exposure blending or other methods that might make my shot just somewhat different than everyone else’s. Maybe that will work, and maybe it won’t — but if I don’t try, it’s an automatic failure.
As for your concerns about experiencing the eclipse… have no fears on that account. I did not spend the entire two minutes of totality behind the camera. I spent quite a good chunk of it simply looking up at the sky with my bare eyes and marveling at this wondrous sight that HKBH has created that does not exist anywhere else in our solar system (and given the odds against the seeming coincidence between the sun’s and moon’s apparent diameters, perhaps anywhere else period) and feeling truly awed and inspired (so much so that I almost forgot to get the final bracketed shots I wanted to get).
The Wolf