About a year and a half ago, Niccolò Segreto called photographer Norris Niman to invite him back to secluded East Greenland. Niccolò, who owns and runs Nunatak Adventures, the Kulusuk-based glacier and mountain guiding company, wasn’t just after another documentation of that magical, insanely epic landscape – this time he wanted to try to capture the eclipse with a group of pilots who were going to fly through it. Norris had spent the last ten years photographing ice and fire and everything in between, but never a shot that only lasts a tiny fraction of a second, where everything has to perfectly align. 

In late July the team set out for a two-week expedition building up to the eclipse. Heading out from their base in Kulusuk, the group of nine included Niccolò guiding, Norris on photo and video for a documentary, two more crew for safety and logistics, and five pilots. They had two spots in mind, both enclosed in fjords beneath towering mountains, with tight take-off spots and a few carefully planned landing zones. 

Getting acclimatized to the rocky Greenlandic terrain while practicing the dance of documenting flights from land and sky, the team scouted every slope, hill, mountain and angle they could find. Pretty early on it became obvious it wouldn’t work as planned. With the sky itself a massive unknown, shooting a paraglider with the eclipse behind it would mean lining it up with a mountain ridge right at take-off. But the angle of the sun at eclipse time was way too high for that. No cliff, no ridge was steep enough to frame it. A shot too impossible to even try to compose. 

So the day before the eclipse, they hatched an uncalculated, unrehearsed plan: have the pilots fly straight out into the fjord, with Norris right below them aiming up at the sun, trying to line it up as they flew through it. A plan doomed to fail, really – a one-in-a-million shot at hitting an invisible mark somewhere up in the sky. Line up with the sun, full focus, empty the mind, hold your breath, fly as straight as you can. Not even the lightest fjord wind was allowed to touch them. What made the plan even attemptable in the first place was the PACE strapped to every pilot’s back – light and packable enough to carry up every scouted slope, and agile enough to hold a razor-straight line under pressure. 

The sky started darkening, hands colder than the other days. Through darkened goggles, the eclipse had begun, and the tension kept growing. The team still had an hour to wait to be as close to totality as possible – too many unknowns to trust the alignment yet. The take-off was a rocky patch of lichen, sharp edges and little twigs ready to grab anyone’s lines, and on top of that, the first clouds they’d seen in fourteen days rolled in. Worst possible timing. The eclipse grew more obscured by the minute. In a few test shots it disappeared from the camera completely. As Niccolò gave the command that the pilots are ready, Norris called out to wait ten more minutes. They might miss the peak, but visibility couldn’t get much worse. 

And then, almost on command, the sun and moon came back into view. Just enough to see through the clouds. Time for the last shot. 

A few failed launches, and then the pilots went one by one, a few minutes apart – not close enough to follow each other’s line as planned, but close enough for the eclipse to keep clearing up. As they flew over Norris, he was shouting into the radios, loud enough to carry into the sky: « Right, right, RIGHT, now left, LEFT! » Two of the first four partially crossed the frame, not close enough to catch the eclipse. The others missed entirely. 

Last of them all, Niccolò was struggling to launch. Lines caught. He stumbled. Waited a moment, watching his friends glide off into the distance. Decided to try again. The PACE lying in a cluster between the rocks. Pulled it free. Face down. Ran. One of the reasons the PACE was chosen for this trip in the first place: a clean, fast, forgiving relaunch even off a rocky, wind-tossed patch of lichen. Full inflation, and off after the others. 

He caught up with Pacifica, flying just ahead of him – with her as a reference in the otherwise empty sky, he could fully focus on lining up the shot. As they flew over Norris, he saw it: the alignment nobody had even dared wish for. Pacifica came in just right of the sun, Niccolò correcting his course to match. Just as Norris looked up to shout « Hold that course! » his tripod gave way and the camera dropped toward the ground. He caught it just before it hit the rocks, switched to hand-held run-and-gun in seconds, looked through the viewfinder. As Niccolò flew right through the eclipse, he fired away. 

The top shot was captured!

It worked. One and a half years of planning, where nothing in the end went as planned. The team still nailed it. On the last try. On the last day. Through the chaos. 

The plan had been to make a documentary about capturing the perfect shot. Something career-defining, a clear before and after. What became clear along the way, though, is that this was never really a story about the eclipse, or even about paragliding. It’s a story about the people who set out together to experience it. About why people chase experiences that humble them, even when they only last a few minutes. And maybe it’s not about the big moment at all, but about the journey that brings people together while chasing it.

Watching a total solar eclipse this far from everyone and everything was humbling in itself. But looking up at the same sun and moon as so many other people on the world, at the same moment – as cheesyas it sounds, it felt like a connection between everyone who was there and everyone who wasn’t. One massive, otherworldly moment, on this tiny grain of sand we all share.