Totality During the 2026 Total Solar Eclipse in Spain

There is nothing in the sky that looks quite like a total solar eclipse.

For a few minutes, the sun disappears. In its place is a perfectly black circle surrounded by the ghostly white tendrils of the solar corona.

This was totality during the 2026 total solar eclipse in Spain.

I'd seen photographs of eclipses long before I ever experienced one. But photographs don't really do what happens when the moon completely covers the sun justice.

The light changes. The landscape darkens. Temperatures fall. And suddenly something that shouldn't seem possible is hanging in the sky above you.

Photographing Totality in Spain

Getting this photograph was far from guaranteed.

I'd spent August 12 leading a group of photographers in northern Spain. Our original location near Cudillero had looked promising in the forecasts, but clouds forming along the Bay of Biscay forced us to abandon it.

We spent the afternoon moving south in search of clearer skies before eventually finding an open hillside near Valbueno.

Even there, we weren't safe.

As the eclipse progressed, a tall cloud began drifting toward the sun. With totality approaching, there was nowhere else to go.

All we could do was wait.

When the Sun Disappeared

Minutes before totality, we prepared our cameras and stopped making adjustments to our tripods.

Then, at almost exactly the moment we needed it, the sun moved into a U-shaped opening at the top of the clouds.

The final sunlight disappeared behind the moon.

And the corona appeared.

"Glasses off and look at THAT!"

The hillside erupted in cheers.

For all the planning involved in photographing a total solar eclipse, this is the moment when the camera almost becomes secondary.

Above us was a black disc surrounded by an enormous white corona, visible to the naked eye in a way you simply can't experience during the partial phases of an eclipse.

For roughly two minutes, we stood in the moon's shadow.

It felt like ten seconds.

Photographing the Solar Corona During Totality

The corona presents an unusual challenge for a photographer because its brightness varies enormously.

The inner corona close to the moon can be intensely bright, while the delicate outer corona stretches much farther into the sky at considerably lower brightness.

There isn't one exposure that captures everything.

During totality, I photographed the eclipsed sun repeatedly at different exposures. Shorter exposures preserved brighter details close to the moon, while longer exposures revealed the faint structures extending outward through the corona.

Those details are what make photographs of totality so fascinating to me.

Two Minutes in the Moon's Shadow

There was another reason this particular totality felt extraordinary.

The clouds were still moving.

They had threatened the eclipse throughout the final minutes before totality, yet the opening remained exactly where we needed it while the moon completely covered the sun.

Then totality ended.

Sunlight began returning from behind the moon, and within about 30 seconds the clouds moved across the sun and swallowed it completely.

Two minutes earlier and this photograph wouldn't exist.

That's part of why I keep chasing eclipses and other rare natural phenomena.

Planning and research give you a good chance.

But none of those things guarantee you'll actually see what you came for.

Sometimes nature doesn't give you much of a chance.

But sometimes two minutes is enough.

Come on my 2027 total solar eclipse guided tour in Spain