Long cold night

The moon was hiding - I had to settle for stars

When I heard back in March that we were going to be able to see a total eclipse of the moon in September, I started to plan. Although this event is not so rare, I have only ever seen a quarter eclipse, looking through the front window of my house in Benthuizen. This time I was determined to see the full blood moon and as the months passed, the thought crossed my mind that I might be able to snap a photo of it as well.

As the day approached, I was practising more and more with night photography and started to understand what was required to photograph the moon and an eclipse. The moon moves very fast, but it is very bright so it is relatively easy to photograph and still get some detail, but an eclipse is different, the moon is dark and needs long exposures which will cause blur, so you have to find the right balance. I could only practise so much, in reality I only had one chance at this.

And we're off

While setting up my final practise run, I waited and waited for the moon to creep above the trees in the forest, but it never came.  I decided to do some star trails instead. My conclusion from this was that when the moon was being eclipsed, it most probably would be behind the trees in the forest or below the horizon created by hill where Taizé is, so I had to find another photo location. I found a spot on the hill at St Roch, not too far from home and tarmaced so the tripod would be steady and I wouldn’t get wet feet. Then I just had to keep my fingers crossed it would be a clear sky.

The alarm went off at 02.30 and I got up to see a beautiful clear sky, the photo shoot was on. I expected to find lots of people on the hill, but I was alone apart from a camper van which, if it had any people in it, never showed any sign of life.

The camera set up, I started focussing at about 3am. The focus kept altering which was either due to the temperature drop for the camera or my inexperience or nervousness. In the end I had one last try and decided that was it - it was either OK or it wasn’t. By this time the eclipse was underway and the light was fading. Every shot needed adjusted settings to get the details on the moon clear and by the time the blood moon appeared I was punch drunk from all the changes I was making.

Blood moon over Cormatin

The blood moon appeared at about a quarter to 5 by which time I was tired and wanted to go home. I had done what I had set out to do, but I had no way of knowing if it had been a success. So, tired and cold, I took the camera off the tripod and started packing up my gear. It was only when I went to walk back up the short slope to get the tripod itself that I realised I couldn’t feel my feet.

Finally home at 05.15 and disaster struck, I couldn’t find the house keys. Cees, being on the deaf side, would probably not hear me knocking or telephoning, but more to the point I didn’t want my keys lying around somewhere. I prepared to set back off to St Roch to find them, but did one last search of my (rather too copious) handbag and out they popped, that was 15 minutes in the cold I could have done without.

Before I went to bed I just had to look at the photos to confirm or not whether I had one good shot out of the roughly 200 I had taken and I was stunned to see it had worked!

In the morning after I sorted out a sequence of the moons, I had a little regret that I hadn’t stayed for another two hours to get the full show back to full moon, but as it took until lunch time for me to be able to feel my feet properly again, it was only a slight regret.

I’m glad I did it, I’m proud of the photos, but this is a one off.

The full show

For information about holiday accommodation where the next total eclipse of the moon is July 27/28 2018 click here