It’s been nearly four years since the last time I set out to capture a photo of a lunar eclipse; in part because I always thought it would be tough to one-up the last one I took, but mainly because the process of capturing a lunar eclipse is cumbersome and I’ve just been too lazy to do it (It takes an inordinate amount of planning and then AT LEAST four hours of shooting the day of. *insert “ain’t nobody got time for that” gif here*). But Wednesday night’s “Super-Blue-Blood” Moon presented an opportunity just rare enough to warrant me staying up all night to photograph it.
Now, as a disclaimer, I must note that, while the Super-Blue-Blood Moon was certainly a unique phenomenon, it was pretty much visibly identical to any other, run-of-the-mill lunar eclipse. Its real significance lies in how infrequently all three astrological events – super moon, blue moon, and blood moon – align with one another (HINT: The last time this particular alignment happened was more than 150 years ago, so…sort of a big deal). To add fuel to the improbability fire, this particular eclipse was NOT fully visible in Texas – my home base – so you could imagine my frustration when reading about one of the rarest astrological phenomena in my lifetime, and then realizing that I probably wouldn’t even get to see it. But when the super, blue, and blood moons align, apparently the stars do, too, because I was just going to happen to be working in Melbourne, Australia during the date of the eclipse; where it would be in full view.
Knowing that I would now be able to witness the Super-Blue-Blood Moon, I set out (a full month in advance) to start planning my photo. I did all the math, picked out potential foregrounds, determined exposure settings, and spent the two weeks preceding the eclipse scouting the city every night to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Seriously, the amount of planning that I did was actually inordinate (told you), so naturally, the night of, it all went out the window. Math? Gone. Lens choice? Gone. Foregrounds? Gone. They all got replaced by the worst thing possible: clouds.
You see, if astro-photographers are Superman (we are), then clouds are our kryptonite; and the night of the eclipse the Melbourne sky was full of astro-photographer kryptonite. An inescapably large mass of clouds was perched above the city skyline, blocking any view of the moon, stars, and even some buildings, and was forecast to stick around for the night. It was the death sentence to a month’s worth of planning and preparing. But, as with every other improbability that had made this photo possible thus far – the moon, the location, the timing - the clouds began to (re)align, too. Just as the eclipse entered its initial stages, a strong wind came across the city, and no more than 10 minutes later what had been a gloomy, cloud-filled sky, was now crystal clear. The picture taking could commence, but (of course) not without a couple more mishaps that would land me at my final product…
As it would turn out, I did my math, well, wrong. The moon was now MUCH higher in the sky than I had predicted it to be (Apparently being an engineer doesn’t mean you’re immune to sucking at math, who knew?), and I was now going to need to completely re-imagine the way in which I was going to compose my photo. That meant changing lenses, location, exposure length, everything. I now had to improvise a photo that I had initially needed an entire month to plan and, honestly, I ended up just getting lucky. I wandered around the Arts Centre of Melbourne Tower – my chosen foreground – looking for a good angle and, after essentially giving up, sat down in the nearby grass, looked up, and saw the picture I wanted. So, yes, at its roots this photo was essentially a mistake that went really, really well.
The three lunar phenomena aligning, the travel to Australia coinciding with the eclipse, the last-minute, cloud-free sky, and the improvised composure and exposure, along with dash of luck, allowed me to defy the astronomical odds (literally) and capture what I would consider to be one of my most memorable photos of the Super-Blue-Blood Moon.