SUPER BLOOD WOLF MOON
Bloody cloudy
After getting anxious and disappointed initially by the overcast sky, I went ahead and set up my camera and waited for the moon to rise. I didn’t know what kind of visibility there would be. The sky was very clear the night before, and clear skies were forecast in the next several days. And yet, that night when we were expecting a total lunar eclipse, it was bloody cloudy.
The moon rose, and it was a very hazy one. This moon, aka Super Blood Wolf Moon, was supposedly slightly bigger and larger due to its closer proximity to earth, and it was visible all across North America. And yet here I was, the sky wasn’t cooperating.
As night got darker, the clouds started giving way a little to a partially clear night sky. I got super excited as the moon looked crisp. But it turned out that it was a night where a series of clouds constantly moved in and out and blurred the visibility of the moon, especially when the moon turned bloody.
The winds never stopped blowing, which forced me to plant the camera super close to my car against the wind with a hope that the wind direction wouldn’t change. And thankfully it rarely did.
It wasn’t the best scenario due to the clouds and winds, but I still managed to capture decent shots. With the focal point at 200mm, I put my camera on the crop mode, which helped me get 1.5x closer to the moon.
Definitely I learned a couple of things from this. High ISO doesn’t work for me. Period. And clouds are simply a no no for lunar eclipse. And I’ll definitely go somewhere remote to capture the next Super Bloody Wolf Moon when it returns in 2 years.
Los Angeles, CA
- Sony A7III
- Canon EF 70–200mm f/4 IS USM
- 189 mm / 1/250 sec and 1/40 at ƒ/4 at ISO 100, 6400 and 12800
- Taken 1/20/2019
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© 2019 H Peter Ji
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About Me
I am a Los Angeles based landscape and portrait photographer.
