August 28th was a special day for astronomy types. It was a chance to see a full lunar eclipse! I wanted to take the opportunity to try to get a better photo than last time, so I did some planning to try to get a good shot.

Unfortunately, the timing was not quite in my favour. For this eclipse, totality was scheduled to happen at around 5:30am, which not only meant that I would have to get up early, but also meant that the sun would be coming up (and the moon would be going down) just as the exciting parts were happening.

Since the moon would be near the horizon, I wanted to try to get some scenery in the shot. Unfortuantely again, that meant that the best place to photograph the moon was a nearby hill that overlooks the city. It sounds ideal, but Waterloo isn't really that picturesque, especially at 5 in the morning, and the only scenery around was an apartment building.

Anyway, I did get up and I did venture out to the hill, and I took this photo of the total lunar eclipse before the moon sunk down into the clouds behind the building and the sun came up.

Emotional details: Picture a tired and very groggy photographer dragging himself out of bed, grabbing his photography equipment, getting into his car, trying to stay alert long enough to drive four blocks to the nearest hill, and walking an additional two blocks in the dark to find a good spot on the hill to view the eclipse. The best angle to get the moon and the building was behind some trees, in knee high weeds and bushes, near a fence marking the limits of a public park. As I stood there in the wetness snapping photos, adjusting settings, and trying to get proper focus, I realized that standing in the bushes with a big telephoto lens pointed at an apartment building was probably not wise, but I hoped the "lunar eclipse" defense would hold up in court. After the moon was out of sight, I turned around and took a picture of Venus rising with the sun, then quickly packed up before anyone noticed me and headed home to go back to bed for another hour before work.

Technical details: This was shot with my Rebel XT + 70-300mm lens at 300mm, ISO 1600, f/8 for 1 second.

Comments

Nice commentary

Nice capture, and I agree with Ken, entertaining commentary.

Why does it say EIEIE in morse code on that building?

Old MacDonald had an apartment building... EIEI... E?