The Lunar Eclipse

On the night of the 27th, I headed out with fellow photographer Max Thomspon to witness and photograph one of the autumn's most exciting celestial events: the lunar eclipse. Even in the early evening the moon looked impressive: rising just before sunset on the south-western horizon, it appeared a beautiful orange colour, and was magnified by the earth's atmosphere. I took this opportunity to get some more artistic images, before all ambient light was lost for this sort of approach. I tried a Dandelion and Harvestmen, silhouetting them against the orange sphere.

Our location for the eclipse was the Lizard: Kynance Cove. We arrived close to midnight, and took plenty of landscapes to utilise the amazing amount of moonlight that made the entire landscape appear very bright. 30 second exposure images resulted in images that looked identical to a bright sunny day! See below for this scene.

After a couple hours of landscapes, we set our prime lenses up and awaited the eclipse- after an hour we realised that we may have got the timings wrong, and so began heading homeward, keeping an eye on progress above. Half way back, we stopped in a lay-by and proceeded to capture the entire sequence of the event, as the spherical shadow of the earth blotted out the sunlight from the Moon's surface, and turned the colour into an eery orangy-red. It truly was a 'supermoon'. We had great fun photographing the event, especially watching as the sky turned increasingly star-filled as the moon's light effect was reduced. There were plenty of shooting stars to see too! Here is a selection of images from the night.

A composite image of the first half of the eclipse

Shortly after the moon rose on the evening of the 27th

A dandelion silhouetted against the moon

A harvestmen perched on some Ragwort

The moon before the eclipse

The moon during the eclipse!

Kynance Cove at night- 30 second exposure!