Friday, April 18, 2014

04/15/14 A Lunar Eclipse

Lunar eclipse sequence at its peak on a chilly April night outside Kewanee, IL

Early Tuesday morning, I drove northwest of Peoria, IL to escape the city lights (light pollution) to better observe a lunar eclipse. I never have had the opportunity to photograph one of these events so I decided it was time to give it a shot on this night. It was a terrible April early morning to be outdoors however with temperatures near freezing which made photographing this event more subdued. Tired and freezing my behind off I decided to just photograph the beginning portion of the eclipse this go around. I do need to get a more higher-end telephoto-zoom lens I found out first-hand on this night as I was using my Canon 5D Mark III along with my Canon EF 70-300mm f4.0-5.6 IS lens. I'll be upgrading that lens down the road as I wanted a little bit better quality especially after cropping. All of these photos were cropped and I also used Photoshop to put together the beginning of the lunar eclipse sequence as well. I've added a few photos below:

Every lunar eclipse starts with a full moon!
And it begins...
Halfway there!
Nearing the peak of the eclipse!
The media hyped "blood moon"!
A more distant shot here...
If you didn't know this event was happening on this night
I'm sure it would freak some out!
A longer exposure to show more the the "blood red" color...
Once again the first half of the lunar eclipse using some of my
photos above in Photoshop...Pretty cool what you
can do with some editing!

It was fun to try something "different" for a change and I'm sure the next go around I'll be much more prepared with a even better telephoto-zoom lens. I'll be posting more over the coming weeks as spring begins to bring severe weather to the Great Plains and Midwest after a very slow start to the chase season. Stay tuned.