Shoot for the moon

because even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

Partial lunar eclipse, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

I was going back through some of my older photos and I found this photograph from during a lunar eclipse. It’s not a great photo, not technically speaking anyway. Despite the technical flaws in this photo I sat here looking at it for a while considering how it had turned out.

It’s interesting to me that this photo has half the moon, dark and visible while the other half is so bright it’s overexposed and clipped. It’s bright enough in this exposure though to have caused a lens flare. This lens flare seems to form a circle, as though some sort of cosmic energy was flowing from this moon in a large arc back to the other side of it. It also seems to almost reflect itself near the far side of the flare where you can see almost like a dim crescent moon shape on the opposite side of the flare.

Again, it’s not technically wonderful for a number of reasons and you can call them out all you like, but maybe it’s still an interesting photo, perhaps because of those technical flaws?

I’m not really an astro photographer. I don’t mind it but it’s not what I really love to do and I wouldn’t say I’m particularly good at it though. Doesn’t mean I won’t get out the camera and give it go if the opportunity arises though. This shot is from the same eclipse, a bit further in the future when it was almost full.

Another photograph from the same lunar eclipse, almost full now.

Thank goodness I didn’t have my subject lit half in bright sunlight and half in shadow. I (mostly) had one exposure to deal with now. I’m still under no delusions that this is a spectacular image, but it’s not terrible I think. For someone who has done very little of this sort of thing. I love the glow from the last bit of light before the totality of the eclipse.

Now that I’ve just finished saying how much of a non-expert I am at shooting the moon, here’s some tips for shooting the moon that might help.

Please, please, please, don’t try to photograph a close up of the sun using this gear or settings, you’ll end up with a destroyed camera or worse, destroyed eyes. Looking at the sun through a…