I am not an astronomer, but the heavens have always fascinated me. I am however an avid photographer, and when the chance of photographing Venus' transit across the face of the sun approached, I knew I had to do whatever it takes to be ready. This is the rarest predictable celestial event, and will not occur again until 2117, when I will be ash and dust.

So a week before the 5th of June I decided to get a solar filter for my Canon 500mm F4 IS L lens. I was extremely lucky to find the Orion 6.58" Solar Filter in stock at my local Canadian Telescope dealer. The same day I rushed out to pick it up for a hefty $109. However without that I cannot photograph the sun at all...

My gear was now ready after some additional purchases:

• Gitzo Series 5 Carbon Fibre Tripod
• Canon 500mm F4 IS L Lens
• Canon 2x Mark III Teleconverter
• Canon 5D Mark III Body
• Orion 6.58" Solar Filter

As the days approached, I got more and more worried. It had been overcast and rainy for the past week, and the weather forecast did not instil any sense of hope either. So I started looking around - and found to my dismay that with weather like this, the whole western seaboard is covered in a layer of clouds. I can drive 600km and still not find sun.

On the 5th of June, early the morning, I scouted a hint of a hole in the clouds over south west Vancouver Island. Based on that I booked a ferry at 13:00, which got me to the island at 14:45. The event started 15:05 but it was still overcast in Sydney, where I landed. I had no choice - drive down to Victoria as quickly I can.

At about 15:38 I managed to get my first photo under blue skies, at least, a blue hole in the sky otherwise surrounded by clouds. This was super thrilling, seeing that all my betting paid off. I got this to show (click on the image for a larger view):

The black dot upper right is Venus, the other black dots are sunspots. I missed the ingress period, but at least I got to see it from here onwards. For the next couple of hours I tried various locations for the best shooting conditions as the wind was howling.

This was the view around me just before I packed up:

Beautiful clear skies above me, but Olympus, Vancouver, Nanaimo etc. all were covered in thick clouds. This opening was solely over Victoria. The closest sun was San Francisco, which is almost 2000km away.

This was my setup:

At about 19:00 I was on the ferry back home. A couple of minutes after I left Sydney this was the view looking back to our departure docks:

Looking in front of me:

Needless to say I was extremely fortunate to have managed to get to witness (and photograph) this unique event.