In October, not much happened in the way of astro-landscapes, or any types of adventures or landscape photography at all for that matter. Other than one of the most notable events in any astro-landscape photographers story book, an essentially perfect lunar eclipse.
Ever since I photographed my first lunar eclipse in 2007 on film, (click here!) I have always been interested in taking an astro-landscape approach to what most people often do with as long of a telephoto lens as they can. Or, if they choose to impose the eclipse’s various phases on a landscape image, they do it in a highly un-realistic, photo-composite manner. Oppositely, I’ve been interested in the star-trail approach to a lunar eclipse, which in my opinion most legitimately represents a single, un-enhanced exposure of an eclipse from beginning to end.
Of course as interesting as an ultra-wide perspective on a lunar eclipse is, a close-up view is still classic. Since I own more than one camera, why not? Although once again while most people attempt to get as close as possible to a lunar eclipse and fill the frame with the moon, I’ve settled on a but less extreme composition, with exposure choices that allow at least a few stars into the image as well.
Your thoughts would be highly appreciated! Look below each image for information on how it was created. Enjoy!
=Matt=
Nikon D800e, Rokinon 14mm f/2.8, extra-ginormous Slik Tripod
~65 individual 2-minute exposures, totaling ~2 hrs of exposure, starting and finishing at approx 25-50% of total eclipse
Individual images processed in Lighroom, exported as JPG, and layered together in StarStax for Mac.
Nikon D5300, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR mk1, FotoPro Tripod
1/2 sec @ f/5.6 & ISO 1600 for the moon, 2 sec @ f/2.8 & ISO 1600 for the stars
Basic processing in Lightroom, slight crop, simple layer masking in Photoshop