Photographer captures wingsuit flight across total solar eclipse

Photographer Noah Wetzel has captured an extraordinary image of Red Bull Air Force athlete Mike Brewer flying in a wingsuit directly across a total solar eclipse in Spain.

At 8:31pm local time, Brewer crossed the sky at more than 150mph, just 15 feet above the Balcón de la Muela ridgeline near Alarilla, north of Madrid. From almost a mile away, Wetzel captured the precise moment Brewer passed in front of the eclipsed Sun.

The photograph was the result of nine months and around 600 hours of planning, training and testing.

“I’m absolutely speechless. I can’t express how insanely challenging that was to line up that photograph,” Wetzel said. “That is as good as it gets and has to be one of, if not the most complex, precise, and pressure-saturated photographs ever captured.”

The pair had just 84 seconds of totality to get the shot, shortly before sunset. Wetzel and Brewer selected a remote location in Spain after considering the narrow path of totality, with local Red Bull athlete and wingsuiter Dani Román helping Brewer assess the site.

Brewer flew in near darkness at more than 150mph while Wetzel photographed from almost a mile away, using radio communication and a sophisticated wireless flash system. He used two interconnected 600mm Canon lenses and three separate wireless flash systems to reduce the risk of technical failure.

The project included four test productions, including a predawn simulation in Moab, Utah, where the team carried hundreds of pounds of equipment up a mountain in darkness.

It was not Wetzel’s first attempt to combine an eclipse with extreme sport. In 2017, he photographed a mountain biker during a total solar eclipse, winning a category in the Red Bull Illume photography competition from 60,000 submissions.

This time, the challenge was even greater.

“We knew that we were picking the hardest way to shoot this photo, but that if we succeeded, it would be the most rewarding,” Brewer said. “The feeling of opening my parachute knowing we got the shot was one of the most powerful in my flying career.”