Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Total Lunar Eclipse on Winter Solstice photo 12-20-2010

It's late, my toes are still cold, but I got an incredible photo tonight of the Winter Solstice lunar eclipse. All day I thought I was going to see clouds and snow instead of the moon so I didn't bother leaving the house tonight. But I got lucky at the last minute, the clouds cleared, and I saw the whole eclipse happen from my driveway. I feel very lucky to have seen it as I have noticed on Twitter and Facebook that a lot of my photographer friends saw only clouds. It was the beautiful red color I had hoped to see. A pine tree made a good foreground and it helps show the actual color of the moon is indeed a reddish orange. Well, here it is:

"Total Lunar Eclipse on Winter Solstice 2" This very special total lunar eclipse was photographed on 12-20-2010 in the Tahoe Donner area of Truckee, CA. 

CLICK HERE to view print purchasing options or to license, download, and use the image right now.


UPDATE:

Wow, this image has gone viral and has quickly become the most viewed image on my website. A big THANK YOU to everyone who shared it or "liked" it.

I've been asked for the technical information on the shot, here it is:

Photographed at 11:52 pm pacific, on a Canon 5D Mark II with a 100-400 lens set to 400mm. The camera was on a tripod, using mirror lock up and a shutter release cable. Settings were ISO 800, aperture set to f16, and it was a 4 second exposure. I used a flash set to manual, full power, to light up the snowy pine tree a bit. Processed with Adobe Raw, with minimal and normal adjustments, the eclipsed moon really was that red.

Tip: I found that any exposure longer than 4 seconds did not work well. The moon moved too much and it looked blurry.

If you have any other questions about the photo, please feel free to ask!


More photos of the eclipse: