WriteAway

 

Well, last night, for the very first time, I decided that I should take a photo or 10 of the lunar eclipse, especially since I heard there won’t be another full eclipse until December 2010. I’ve never really done any night photography beyond a couple of snapshots in fairly well-lit areas. I did have a little time to prepare: when I heard about the eclipse on the local NPR radio station, it was around 6:00 p.m. The eclipse was supposed to start at 8:01 p.m. EST.

So I got out the camera, took it out of its case, pulled out my short course book for the Canon Rebel XT, and started reading about what I needed to do. It seemed simple enough. I got the tripod set up, put on my long johns and a warm top, made sure I knew where the stocking cap and gloves were, and waited. At a quarter to eight, I went outside and picked a spot to set up. I’m quite far out in the country in the hills (jest an ole’ country woman!). There’s a fairly steep gravel lane that goes up to the house that was purchased by the present owners after my sister died and her husband went off to try living with family members, but eventually ended up in a senior living place, with care for Alzheimer’s victims.

Anyhow, the ‘big’ house is about 1/5 of a mile up the gravel lane, then down the other side. Neither the house nor its lights are visible from my house. Sounds ideal, huh? However, by 8:00-ish, it was already down to 20°F and it didn’t stop there. There were a couple of inches of snow on the ground. It was very cold, very dry, and stunningly clear. And it took about 5 minutes for my fingers to go completely numb from fiddling with the camera without my right glove on. All I’ve got after moving back from California are some knit driving gloves with a little bit of leather here and there. Not adequate, by a long shot.

Since I was looking through the viewfinder up into pitch black woods and/or pitch black sky and couldn’t make out where the image ended and the camera began, I had a lot of trouble even finding the stupid moon and getting it centered in the frame, though I wasn’t very worried about that. Can you say “crop?” After 10 or 15 minutes, the tripod and camera were set up and aiming at the target, and I started snapping pics. Well, it wasn’t exactly a rapid-fire operation. I set the camera on Program mode to let it handle the exposure, figuring it was worth sacrificing some creative control to not have to take off my gloves again. If I counted correctly, I think the exposure time was around 30 seconds. I took a total of 29 photos, but not all at once.

Every time my fingers went totally numb and began to hurt, I grabbed camera and tripod, climbed back up the icy, snowy steps into the house, ran lukewarm water over my fingers until they thawed out a bit, had another cup of hot chocolate with too many marshmallows in it, and waited until I was at least half way defrosted. Then I hauled my gear back out into the snow and cold. I repeated the process three or four times until it just wasn’t worth it any more. I did make subsequent forays, but just onto the porch, sans camera and tripod, to marvel at the show in the sky before retreating to the warmth of the house.

The photos were… not so spectacular. They came out, but with little detail. I did learn that there’s a limit to what one can realistically expect from an EFS 17-85mm lens. Guess I’ll have to save up for something better suited to taking pictures of the moon and planets. Maybe I can get my own observatory. I have time: I probably got the nightime astronomical photography bug out of my system until I’m somewhere that a really cold night is around 50°F or above.

The picture above this post is, at least temporarily, called “What to do with a bad photo of a lunar eclipse.” I opened it in Photoshop CS3 Camera RAW, messed with just about everything, and finally had to accept that it wasn’t ever going to be anything other than a big, round, fairly smooth peach-colored circle, until I changed the exposure drastically. What you see above is what I ended up with. I decided I kinda’ like it. I’m not sure if all the “reflections” are nearby stars (Saturn and something else were prominant last night) or maybe just ice crystals or teensy bits of moisture on the lens. It could even be reflections off the trees that cover the lane for all I know. Who cares? Are there such things as moon spots?

My normal procedure, after some tweaks in Camera RAW, is to make a copy of the background layer, apply artsy filters, invert the image copy, play with blend modes and, on good days, come up with something interesting, sometimes by design, but just as often by accident. The only thing I did to this one was resize a copy for online viewing and save the JPG. I suppose that now, having told you how little I did to produce this wondrous work of art, I’ll have to price it low, since I’ve decided not to charge for walking out my front door and plunking the tripod down in the driveway; never mind that I almost lost all the fingers on my right hand (not to mention my nose and ears) to frostbite!

If you’re interested, check back soon. I haven’t yet decided what size it will be, but will post print price plus options within the next day or two.

Stay warm. Here in the rural isolation in beautiful downtown Ohio, it’s snowing again. The temps tonight and tomorrow night look like they’ll be in the lower 20s; Saturday night? 12°! I just can’t wait.

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