Blood Red and Beaver Moon

I was reminded early Monday evening that the blood moon, or blood red moon, would be happening that night. So, I took my phone out front, checked the appropriate app, and saw that the moon would still be visible at 6, which would be the hour of the total eclipse. Of course, it would be out back.

Not knowing what the conditions would be like at 6, I nevertheless began to prepare. I attached my longest lens, 100-400mm, set up the camera more or less how I might need it to be for the eclipse photo, and set the camera on the table by the back door.

Then, I went out front to the car to retrieve my tripod that lay in the trunk. The Beaver Moon was bright and full over the buildings on the other side of the street. Not only that, but there were lovely clouds all around it. I scurried inside to get the camera, but when I got back outside, just a few minute later, the clouds were gone gone gone.

I took a photo anyway, and I am happy with the result. I have photographed full moons before, but I have gone somewhere with good sightlines to get in context with the surroundings. Otherwise, one just takes a photo of the moon, which is more or less the same as everyone's photo of the moon from everywhere. Nevertheless, I am pleased to have done it this once, especially at the last minute, and just outside my front door. Of course, the image is well cropped because my zoom lens isn't all that long compared to some that other photographers might possess..

Sue also endeavoured to shoot the moon, as it were, with her phone, but some pictures using phone cameras don't work out very well. She did get this ↓ photo of me, however. How lazy of me just to shoot from my driveway! The green cast is from the light over the garage, and the bright light on the right edge is the moon. I was using my headlamp to help me see the camera settings in the dark, which accounts for the white light farther down the driveway.

I didn't set an alarm, but I did start waking up at 5 in the morning. We have a view from the upstairs bedroom window that showed the eclipse in progress. At the time it was something like a dim crescent moon and not very impressive, so I went back to bed. Of course, I didn't get back to sleep, so I checked the progress of the eclipse again around 5:30. The picture hadn't changed much.

After making coffee and doing some computer stuff, I checked the progress of the eclipse again but remained unimpressed.. At 6, however, the eclipse was complete, and upon seeing a very faint red circle, I decided to head downstairs and outside in the 1ºC cold. 

My first photo attempt (not shown) from the lower, more spacious part of the deck included a wire right through the middle of the moon. I then stepped back onto the higher, narrow level right next to patio door. I could put the tripod on the edge of the ledge and just manage to peek around the corner of the house to get a more unobstructed photo.

While the eye is better than the camera in almost all cases. this is one time in which the camera could see the moon brighter once I adjusted the settings. and I am rather pleased that the image is as good as it is. At first, the photo was noisy (grainy) due to the very high ISO that I was forced to use, but I was able to amend some of the noise in Lightroom. There are some newer, magical programs that both reduce noise while sharpening the image at the same time, but I don't have one of those, and I am happy enough with this result.

I did take another photo to purposefully get some tree branches in the photo for context, but they are nebulous enough that I prefer the former photo. I don't think that you are seeing the branches at this resolution, but if you click to enlarge the image, you might see them on the right side of the photo.

I am fairly pleased with both the regular, full Beaver Moon, photo of the early evening as well as the two blood moon images, especially since they were all just taken out my front door and back door respectively.

As an afterthought, I took the first red image that I showed you and cropped it more, a little more like I did with the bright, full, Beaver Moon.