It was a cold early morning with a steady wind blowing across the area, but the night sky was crisp and cloud free!
While waiting for the event to start, I was reading various Facebook posts from friends talking about how the clouds in their area where making in nearly impossible to see the moon.
I was also using “The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE)” software program to figure out a particular capture I had in my mind.
Finally, at about 1am, I packed up my car with my camera bag, tripod and extra clothing, and set off to my secret location.
Driving to my location was very easy, and I was surprised not to see many people out looking into the sky.
After getting to “my” location, and setting up, I realized, “my shoot” was not going to happen with the event occurring nearly straight over head.
Oh well, I was going to get some picture no matter what.
What really surprised me was how bright the moon was!
I did take a few early shoots from “my secret location”, but then packed up and headed back home because the wind was cutting right through me.
At home, I setup again, but used the garage to block some of the wind, and I was able to go inside to warm up a little between captures, and have a beer!
Initially, I was able to shoot at ISO100 at 1/15-1/80 in the ƒ8-11 range, but by the full eclipse, I had to push the CCD sensory speed up to ISO1600, and focusing was becoming very difficult.
By 3am, I packed up for the morning, and went inside.
I was too tired to download my images, and went to bed.
After a night to recover, I finally transferred my 150+ images my computer, and used Adobe Lightroom to sort though all of them.
Even with a tripod, I was able to notice, the wind moved the camera just enough to cause many rejects.
I ended up shooting a 50:1 ratio, which is not very good, but if I had been using traditional film, I would have gone broke with processing charges!
Yeah Digital!
I did spend some time looking on Flickr to see what others had captured before I created my final composite, and finally posted everything to my “2010 Winter Solstice – Lunar Eclipse” Flickr set.
References
NASA – “Eclipses During 2010”
Flickr group – Lunar Eclipse December 21 2010
