Editor’s note: The following is an account from Steamboat Springs resident and photographer Noah Wetzel. Wetzel worked for nine months to prepare for a shoot in Alarilla, Spain to capture photos of wingsuit athletes as they crossed in front of the total eclipse on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026.

I’m absolutely speechless.

I can’t express how absolutely insanely challenging it was for me to line up the photograph. I couldn’t be more stoked with the results — that is as good as it gets, and has to be one of, if not the most complex, difficult, precise and pressure-saturated photographs ever captured in the world. Ever.

That took everything I had in me, and I can honestly say I will never pursue another photograph on that level in my career again.

It’s nearly impossible to position the ring of totality and align them flying through it without any lights on the wingsuit athletes — besides a blinking bike light the size of a quarter on their legs that we could only see vaguely from our perspective dropping 100′ between every blink of the light. 

They were flying in complete night conditions within the eclipse and moving at speeds of upwards of 150 mph. Exiting from a powered paraglider positioned 2,000 feet above and dropping into the frame, they resembled a heat seeking missile.

I could only trigger two photos in burst mode at one-eighth flash power, giving me room of only a few hundredths of a second for error. Trusting my settings and the 500 hours of research, planning and testing I invested in this project, I relied upon my gut instinct to select the camera settings I thought would be perfect for that moment. 

Just before totality, I was racing to position the eclipse ring to the upper right of the Red Bull pylon, knowing the athletes’ trajectory would fly right through the center of the ring. Even at 99 percent, an eclipse can damage camera lenses and camera bodies, so I wasn’t able to track the eclipse with the solar filter on while aligning the pylon in the frame due to the black out filter that is essentially welding glass.

As a result, in the final minute of totality I made a risky decision to trust my gut, take off the solar filter and swing the camera over to the right side of the mountain, grabbing focus on a cross positioned on the summit overlooking the town of Alarilla. Focusing on that gave me confirmation that the image would be sharp, but I still needed it to be in totality to swing the lens back left, to the left corner of the mountain, and set the composition of the shot.

As it entered totality, there was a huge roar from the crowd watching the eclipse a mile away on top of the mountain. That let me know that it had gone into totality. I was racing to compose the image and stabilize the tripod angle, knowing Red Bull wingsuit athlete Dani Roman was going to exit — jumping out of the powered paraglider rig — as soon as it went into totality.

As I was tightening the tripod composition, I heard the call, “Dani has exited, Dani has exited!” I quickly took one glance at the ring of totality, an unbelievably surreal sight positioned just above the horizon from a mile away.

The perspective was unbelievable. The last few rays of light suffocated as the sky entered totality. The moon slowly slide into place as if affixed on a string pulled into perfect alignment with the diameter of the sun.

Shielding our eyes — the last few rays of sunlight stretched around the surface of the moon, shooting out towards Earth before becoming completely blocked within the final minute.

It was a powerful moment, but it was not personally enjoyed by the photography team, besides living within the scenario of the ultimate challenge to bring this idea to life.

With one quick glance I cross-referenced my camera settings to make sure nothing was bumped (meanwhile Dani Roman was falling towards the Earth after exiting).

Once I confirmed the settings, I bumped up the ISO setting to 2,500, knowing I needed slightly more light in the scene and for the flashes to have a more powerful effect. 

Staring immediately up into the dark sky with impaired vision, I knew locating him was going to be nearly impossible. I strained with extreme focus, intent on the vague paraglider shape in the sky knowing I would see a human falling at any point.

That’s where training and practice come into play. Knowing the speed they are falling at and the angle of their flight path as their flight mimics a bell curve near the end of their flight as they flatten out and flare upwards to slow down and deploy their parachutes. 

There’s no time to change flash power settings, therefore everything has to be perfect. Not only that, the flashes have to fire from 1,400 meters away, which is statistically, and photographically, unlikely.

I was racing through the field in the final five minutes before it entered totality, attempting to track and align the sun and moon in a position where the athletes would fly through the center of the ring of totality, all while not being able to look at the sun because it was extremely painful. Leading into the final minutes, I told myself the only way I was going to perfectly align the eclipse was to look at it repeatedly.

I finally got into position for Dani Roman and was resetting my composition and focus as totality approached — just enough time for him to exit the powered paraglider while I glanced upwards and saw the smallest blinking light between my vision that was partially impaired from being blinded. 

He flew into the frame within 10 seconds, the eclipse had set so much I had to make the risky decision to move 20 feet backwards and re-align my tripod and composition. Keep in mind, the totality last 84 seconds. 

Somehow, I did just that. It was definitely muscle memory and extreme preparation at this point. Glancing upward, I heard the call from the fly over location: “Mike’s exited, Mike’s exited!” and I located him mid-flight. 

What’s even more insane is that Mike had two paraglider engine issues. He was on the ground five minutes before totality and found a random paraglider pilot, a third-party pilot, who ripped in on a dirt bike and motioned to Mike that he would get him up in the air. 

Mike hopped in with seconds to spare and showed the pilot a pinned location in the sky to fly towards. They were somehow able to get up high enough in a few short minutes to give Mike an opportunity to exit the paraglider before totality ended. Mike dropped into his line at a steep angle, building speed to ensure he would make it to the location in time and also maintain clearance to deploy his shoot.

Just in time. Just in time. Wow. I cannot believe we were able to pull that off. I couldn’t be more stoked. This is the best shot of my career, hands down. There’s no way I can capture an image better than this.  Next total solar eclipse, maybe I’ll be able to enjoy it!

All time. All time. Wow.