What do supermoons and solar eclipses have in common?

You won't find a decent photograph of either on this blog. 

I thought I was prepared for the solar eclipse yesterday. I had scouted locations days in advance, 

planning my shots, rehearsing the route I'd take in the Ranger so I could cover them all during 

the four-and-a-half-minute window when the moon's shadow would hide the sun, leaving a ring of fire around the edge.

An hour before the big event, I gathered my camera bag with all my lenses, my assistant, 

and every pair of protective eyewear I could find.

I had instructed everyone, including me, to not look directly at the sun.

How I was going to take pictures of something I couldn't look at would be a challenge.

I put the camera on manual focus set at infinity, then I stopped the lens down to the smallest aperture 

and shot at the highest shutter speed. Then I aimed the camera at the general direction of the western horizon.

Whoo-hoo! Not only did I get the sun, I also captured pink UFOs landing in the pasture.

Nobody told me one of Saturn's rings would be visible. What an unexpected surprise.

Please don't burst my bubble and tell me that's really some sort of lens defect.

I eventually figured out how to make the UFOs and Saturn's ring disappear by putting my thumb 

over the viewfinder to block the weird reflections, but I still wasn't seeing any sign of the eclipse.

Don't let this one fool you. It was taken 15 minutes prior to the time the ring of fire was supposed to occur. 

I think I got lucky and a couple of dust spots on the lens aligned.

7:33 came and went and I've got nothing to show you for it. I do know that the birds stopped singing, 

there wasn't a whisper of a wind, and the light was freakin' amazing. I gave up trying to capture it with my camera 

and just looked around and took it all in. Sometimes memories are better than pictures anyway.