(Re-posting this after an interior URL broke on my August 29 post; I could not fix it because I was past the editing time limit.)
In a way, this image was 38 years in the making. When I viewed the 1979 total solar eclipse near Goldendale, Washington, my first impression was that all the eclipse photos I had ever seen had lied to me. None of them came anywhere near capturing the stunning beauty of the celestial sight. The range of corona brightness was just too wide to capture in a single photo, even though I could plainly see the whole thing with my eyes.
This time, from Salem Oregon on January 21, I resolved to do better. Armed with a Canon 450D and a 400mm Canon L-series lens, I planned to capture an HDR image that better conveys what we see with our eyes when we gaze upward at the eclipsed Sun. Photomatix Pro was used to process 12 exposures ranging from 1/4000 sec to 1/2 sec (ISO 200, f/11). To compensate for the Moon's motion relative to the corona during those 12 exposures, I chose the 1/60 sec shot from the sequence for the Moon's silhouette. For Regulus, I used the 1/8 sec shot.
Full resolution version here.
I declined the temptation to show things that could not be seen with the naked eye, like earthshine on the Moon's face. In short, my goal was to convey, as much as I could, the incredible grandeur of the vista I remember seeing with my own eyes when I gazed upward on January 21.