Maurice Bakley's phone picture captures eclipse, first many have seen

Maurice Bakley was acting as chaperone for an eclipse watch party at his son’s elementary school in Arlington, Virginia, when he took a picture of a group of boys watching the event. The image was captured during the eclipse itself and later became notable for its composition.

Bakley arrived ahead of the start to set up his iPhone on a tripod, attaching a monocular and a solar filter so he could record a time‑lapse of the phenomenon. He then reached for his iPad to snap the particular shot of the children seated on the ground.

“The boys in the photo, one of whom is my son, are part of a tight group of friends. They’ve known each other since kindergarten through their bilingual Spanish immersion school,” Bakley said. “They were eight and nine years old at the time, and none of them had ever seen an eclipse in real life.”

He knelt to the children’s level, explaining that a top‑down view “wouldn’t have conveyed the same intimacy,” and noted that he approaches mobile photography as he once did SLR work, being “intentional in both the capture and the edit.” When processing the picture, he applied a film‑like colour grade, added a slight background blur and chose a square crop, saying, “I don’t crop in that way often,” and that it “suited this composition, lending a more timeless, nostalgic feeling.”