Wolf Blood Moon - 1 out of 300 shots

This morning with very little sleep, little rest and little motivation I crawled out of my semi warm bedding and got dressed in nearly full winter attire. Grabbing my camera bag on the way out and picking up my tripod I left near my back door to set up my camera for the next hour. It wasn't the first time I tried capturing an eclipse especially a red one. But I knew It was going to be a hard shot to capture considering my most zoomed in lens was only a 300mm, which no where near suitable enough to capture a clear shoot of the moon. Fortunately thanks to a really good photography channel ran by Tony and Chelsea Northurp, it taught me the new technique of 'stacking'. A few days earlier as I was walking home from work, I noticed how bright the moon was so I thought I might aswell try out the technique.

The results were outstanding considering this is an image which is already heavily cropped in. The idea is to take up to about ten images of the moon and stack them on top of eachother to create one super sharp image. This made it look like I took the image using a telescope instead of a standard zoom Lens. I was definitely looking for to using this kethod for the blood moon.

Back to the current cold morning. I started shooting about 4;30am, the temp was dropping to about between -2 and -3 degrees hence the need for winter clothing. I was tempted to to maybe head out to shoot, but because of already sleepless and tired I was, I thought it was best to just stay near home. So I was all setup, all zoomed in and even was watching a listening to the live of broadcast of iJustine on YouTube who was doing exactly what I was doing.

So I stood out in the bitter cold for until about 5:15am were it was supposed hitting its peak. During this period I was struggling to get a decent exposur, habing to nearly adjust my settings for every shot for th first 50 shots. Eventually about half way through where the moon was just about fully eclipsed I was finally nailing the settings. I just followed the same technique that I learnt before. So I went for about tens shots each while re-adjusting the camera each time because of the moons movement. I found that most shots were coming a little to blurry, because I shooting a slower shutter speed than I wanted it, but after a few minor adjustments I finally got the perfect look I wanted.

In all, I ended up with just about over 300 images on my camera. While processing on my computer and warming with a pot noodle, there was only a handful of shots I could use, but I’m still happy with the result.

Paitence is a virtue as they say.....

Thanks for reading, hopefully I more updated and at least do one blog each weeks.

Kevin Ho