Fellow traveller

Obviously it didn't look like this.

Went out about 9.25 am to a bit of park outside work; I was fairly unprepared sun-viewing-wise, having grabbed a bit of aluminium foil on the way out of the house this morning, knowing I had a badge on my jacket that could serve as a pin. The forecast was for cloud, and was fairly accurate, so I decided my impromptu pinhole wouldn't be helpful, and thought that just experiencing a bit of weird gloominess would be interesting in itself.

There were a few people in the park, mostly students, but as I walked past him this guy asked if I had come to see the eclipse. He let me try looking through a CD (quite effective at this level of cloud cover), and his Sky at Night (or whatever it is now ) specs, which were far too dark. Sometimes we could see bugger-all, at others the cloud cover was just right for naked-eye viewing. It was a bit gloomy and certainly chilly. Main issue for photos was that the sun reflecting on the clouds was brighter than the sun itself.

We had a chat about cameras and dark rooms, he showed me a couple of very nice shots he'd got through some fairly basic filters. I'm very introverted and not at all one for chatting, but I have a very small list of random conversations that seemed to mean something, and I shall add this one to it.

The blip is two phone pics from slightly different positions, if you zoom in enough you can make out the crescent of the sun - that bit was taken through the CD. Also featured is one of the labs I work in, in the building to the right with the lights on.