I was so excited to hear about the Super Blood Moon - the fairly rare occurrence of a Super Moon eclipse.
A Super Moon is a moon that is a full moon at it's perigee, or closest point to Earth in it's slightly oblong orbit. It makes it look super large, especially at moonrise when it's close to the horizon. And, become of the remnants of light that comes around the earth from the sun, the moon is tinged red when it is eclipsed. It's a photographer's dream.
We decided to go out to the River Road (where I attempted my last shots of a Super Moon...they all turned out terrible BTW); I had refreshed my memory on night shooting on my camera but it's always something that is fraught with stress because I tend to forget and get frustrated. haha I was determined that this was going to work.
In a scene straight out of The Birds, as soon as we parked on the levee, a huge flock of crows flew over and started circling us, cawing loudly. They eventually settled down into the trees.
It was a gorgeous day, but unfortunately, there was a thick cloud layer just along the Eastern horizon. The moon in Sacramento was going to rise almost fully eclipsed, so having part of it being obscured by the clouds was a disappointment.
In addition to the crows, we were treated to the loud honking of Canadian Geese that flew overhead in their customary V formation.
However, the clouds in the sunset were stunning. So I contented myself with capturing some of the purple and orange beauty.
I also dabbled with long exposure when I saw a few planes in the sky. My result??
Of course when I was facing West trying to catch some weird picture, one of the older ladies near us asked "Is that it?" I turned and it was about halfway out of the clouds, looking red and malevolently beautiful.
As expected, at this point it was almost fully-eclipsed. But that's okay; I was so happy I could get a couple of pictures with the dark trees in them!
You can just see the slight, orangey looking rim on the right bottom. That was the only part not covered by the Earth's shadow.
So at this point, we decided to head home while the full eclipse was happening. I had neglected to think about how standing by a river on a warm, humid night would make us choice mosquito dinner.
By the time we got home about 25 minutes later, the moon was starting to come out of the eclipse. Now you can see the white rim on the opposite side...lower left.
Little bit more...
And now halfway there! Note: I took this through tree branches thinking it would make a "cool" effect.
And now, because so much of the extremely bright moon was visible, I had to switch settings and go to a higher aperture and shorter shutter speed in order to get some detail in the moon. Consequently, most of the red effect from the shadow is taken away. To the naked eye, it still looked tinged with red but not nearly as much.
We're almost there!
As the red from the shadow was receding, I decided to try some different white balance settings. I think, especially beside the red photos, it looks over compensated and almost blue. But still gorgeous!
This one I darkened slightly in order to bring out all the detail in the moon. So amazing.
And here's the final finished product. A gorgeous, bright-white Super Moon!
All photos taken by ME! with my Nikon D3000, Nikon ED Nikkor 70-300 lens. I absolutely used a tripod and also used the timer button to lessen vibration since I do not have a remote. Actually I do but it doesn't work. Thanks camera store.
The early photos with full/mostly full eclipse were taken with ISO 200, Shutter speeds up to 8 seconds, and aperture set at f5.6 (the lowest my lens will go). After half of the bright moon was exposed, I switched to 1/125 Shutter speed, aperture between f8-f11 (same ISO).
Next I will tackle star trails! Hope you enjoy my photos and story as much as I did creating them.
xoxo
