An evening with the eclipse
Last Thursday, as many of you know, we had a full lunar eclipse throughout most of North America and South America. At work, a group of us decided to go out and photograph it. Key among our fears was the infamous Seattle weather would cause it to be too cloudy to get a shot. Therefore three of us decided to head to Alki Beach, famous for its views of Seattle. Therefore if the weather did not cooperate we would at least get some pretty shots of the city. Admittedly I had a hidden agenda as I knew 200mm on a full frame body wouldn’t cut it for the eclipse. My hope was to get some nice city shots – the eclipse was a bonus if it decided to show. Luckily, both worked out for us.
The shot above is a panorama I made of the city and the moon almost at full eclipse. Retrospectively, I could have made a collage of the moon at different positions. The following is how the moon itself looked on my camera.
Yup, pretty tiny. Eventually I plan to buy a 600mm, and with a 2x extender I have a feeling it would fill almost the entire frame. In the meantime I was very glad to get the opportunity to take some Seattle shots. Personally I feel that Seattle is a very photogenic city, allowing a number of pretty shots from different angles.
The above shot has an interesting story. Obviously it has been Photoshopped. I take all shots in RAW and often I select ‘auto’ for the exposure selections. If I don’t like the automatically selected values (which is usually the case), I go back to default and set things the way I like. However in this case I rather liked the auto-settings. They are a bit artificial but the shot still looks rather nice. What do you think? Too artificial or worth it?
The above shot occurred during sunset, with the sun shining on the buildings. The following shot is another example of where I let Photoshop choose default settings.
Finally, this is one of several panoramas I put together from shots that evening.
Altogether it wasn’t a bad day for photographing. I’m sure if I had my hopes up for getting a good eclipse shot, I would have been disappointed. However, as my true hope had been to get some decent Seattle shots I am happy with the results.
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Looks like it turned out great and loved hearing about what you did with photoshop! I love the moon over the city . . . I wish I had decided to pull my tripod out and get a few pictures myself! Thanks for sharing!