Thursday, February 21, 2008

Lunar eclipse photography.

I hadn't anticipated getting to do anything during the total lunar eclipse of February 20 (officially listed as the 21st GMT, but it was still the 20th in the USA), but the weather worked out in my favor. It had been completely cloudy all day, but when I looked out at 7:00p I could see the moon! A closer look out and it looked like the clouds were clearing out from the west.

I got my gear set up on my back deck and starting shooting images about 7:45p. It was cold and getting colder all the time, but I did manage to take photos until 10:00p. Thanks to the info on www.MrEclipse.com I was able to get close on the exposure and I was bracketing every shot. My goal was to shoot every 5 minutes, but the light clouds moving in and out kept me from any regular schedule.

The eclipse hit totality shortly after 9:00p CST and it the sky was cloudless by that time. I shot pretty continously for about 45 minutes with bracketing exposures from 1½ to 8 seconds (f8 with 200mm lens and 1.4 teleconverter). The cold forced me indoors as the light started to show on the moon again. I'm anxious to play with the images in Photoshop to see if I have gotten anything that will be worthy of additional work and printing.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Award Winning photograph

My photograph of the Yosemite Chapel on a snowy morning won an honorable mention in the Landscape division of the 2008 Southeastern Flower Show in Atlanta. And to top it off, someone bought that print during the show! At the very least I feel that I recouped my cost of entering the competition and printing/framing the three prints that were selected to hang at the show.