The lunar eclipse of 8/28/07. A great deal of planning (months ahead of time) went into the creation of this shot. So read on only if you're a serious astro-geek, or are just bored and trying to get drowsy in advance of a good nap.

Since the eclipsed moon would set from Madison while the total phase was still in progress, I made it my goal several months ago to incorporate the Madison skyline into my shot. This meant calculating where I had to be to catch the moon setting in close proximity to the dome. Since I had shot previous moon rises and moon sets extensively, I had a lot of practice, and had only to look up the exact position of the moon on the morning of August 28, and to record the position in azimuth when the moon was about 1 degree in altitude (the approximate elevation of the dome. With this info in hand, courtesy of Starry Night Pro, I acquired a google map of the area, and put a protractor to use. After measuring some angles, I drew a line leading away from the capitol dome, eastward across the lake. Where that line intersected the shoreline of Lake Monona was my shooting location (an apartment complex with a nice lakeshore).

Once I had the location picked out, I decided that rather than going for a very tight shot of the moon and the dome, as I had often shot before, I wanted to do something a little more artistic. I had seen several mosaics like this before an decided to try it myself. I calculated where the moon would be as the penumbral phase began (about 3 am local) and, after carefully calculating the moon's altitude at that time, and its azimuth at setting, chose my Tokina lens, which at about 20mm, should easily encompass both the moon and the skyline, and hopefully make for a pleasing composition without too much distortion.

I arrived on site at about 2:20 am, and had plenty of time to set up and take a few test shots. Set up mainly involved carefully leveling the tripod and composing the shot so that the moon was correctly located in the upper left and the capitol skyline in the lower right. I began my exposures precisely at 3:00 am. I had previously decided to do one exposure every 4 minutes. The only real challenge was deciding what shutter speeds to use, since the illumination levels of the full moon vs. the partially eclipsed moon vs. the totally eclipsed moon vary by many magnitudes. I had read a few web sites with recommendations on exposure, and, with my own test shots during setup, had a pretty good idea how to proceed. I purposely overexposed the first shot to give a blooming anchor for the eye in the upper left hand of the photo. I then switched to 1/15th of a second until the moon was nearly in full eclipse, and lengthened the exposure to 1/5th, then 1, then eventually 4 seconds. I had to boost the ISO and bump it up to 6 seconds because the moon became almost impossible to see as it entered the hazy muck at lower altitudes. The later shots, as dawn grew closer, gave me the blue twilight sky. The encroaching dawn and thickening haze eventually spelled the premature end of my sequence, well before the moon reached the region of the capitol dome.

I packed it up and headed home for a 2 hour nap, then fired up photoshop to see what my efforts had produced.

I had over 45 images to work with. I selected one of the dawnish shots with a deep blue sky to use as my background, and then copied all of my moon exposures into the Photoshop PSD file in separate layers. I carefully cropped each image, leaving only the moon and a bit of surrounding sky, and then played with blending modes to create a seamless blend between the lunar disk and the blue background sky (most of the moon shots were when the sky was darker so their cropped images had black backgrounds). Luckily, photoshop's blending modes were perfectly suited to this task and I was able to integrate all the images with no unseemly (and time consuming) touchups.

Once the final was fully assembled, I could see that I had a nice shot on my hands. I was amazed at how easily and quickly it came together. My preparation and planning had paid off handsomely! The final image was put through the normal post production enhancements, curves, levels, NEAT, etc. and then cropped slightly to produce the composition seen above. One thing I want to emphasize is that for all of my photoshop manipulation of multiple images, this composite retains full photographic integrity. It is a true time-lapse image, with nothing created that was not a real event that morning.

Alas, for all my going on and on, the image is imperfect. My biggest gripe is that I didn't experiment with shorter shutter speeds for the initial shots, which would have given me detail on the lunar disk, rather than a white circle. The lens distortion pulled the first few moon images into ovals. The hazy conditions prevented me from capturing the eclipsed moon all the way to the horizon. Plus a few more nits not worth picking here - I like the shot. No, I love the result and am very happy with its visual impact. I'm very happy with the result and am proud to place this among my favorite photographic accomplishments!