Full moons come and go, and when they come they offer awesome opportunities for photographers. Blood moons, on the other hand, are rare, so when Okinawa was lucky enough to get one, I made the decision to stay up all night to shoot it. Fortunately, it was a clear night with little haze and the clouds that came through were all low altitude clouds that blew by fairly quickly. That gave me the opportunity to acquire this image.
Shooting the Blood Moon from Okinawa
I should start by admitting that I’m not really equipped to get first-rate images of the moon. I shoot with a full-frame camera and the longest lens I have is a Tamron 70-20mm f/2.8 zoom. This is great for shooting portraits up close, but it isn’t the ideal lens for a close-up lunar shot. Lunar photographers tend to use longer lenses and possibly cropped sensor cameras, allowing them better reach than I could get with my setup. But that didn’t stop me from doing the best I could with the gear I had.
The first thing I had do to was find a good vantage point. I was planning to go out to the seawall by Awase where it’s relatively dark, but the position of the moon was such that I didn’t even have to that far. I was fortunate enough to be able get the shot from my balcony. This worked because it was shielded from bright ambient light and somewhat protected from the wind.
The next step was to frame the shot and focus. It’s best to frame the moon in the center of the image because that is where the optics of the lens are clearest and brightest. Some lenses vignette at the edges and the Tamron lens is one of them, so this was an important consideration. Focus was achieved by manual means, and the lens was focused to infinity. I used live mode so I could use the viewfinder to focus using 10x zoom. Even this was imperfect, because the tiniest turn of the zoom ring results in a loss of perfect focus. The good news is that unless you’re really cropping substantially, very slight imperfections are tolerable.
Exposure Time
The next thing I had to do was decide how long an exposure I wanted. This is an important consideration in any kind of astro photography because, as we all know, the earth is turning (or, if you’re a flat earther, the stars are moving) and too long an exposure will result in motion blur or smearing. This can work great when you’re shooting star tails, but for lunar photography, motion is your enemy.
When shooting a normal full moon, it’s easy to short with a relatively fast shutter speed because the moon is bright, meaning it’s possible to use a low ISO setting and still achieve a good exposure. But a blood moon is much darker. It doesn’t look all that dark to the naked eye, but the camera sees it as close to 10 or 12 stops darker. That’s the difference between 1/100 of a second and 8 seconds on the same stop and ISO. And 8 seconds just won’t do. In fact, even one second is pushing it if you want a super sharp image because the motion of celestial bodies is fast enough that one second will cause smear.
However, since I knew my full-frame sensor and 200mm lens combination wouldn’t give me enough reach for a true closeup, I decided capture a wider shot with some stars and even some clouds. One second was just enough to capture the motion of the clouds and still give me enough detail on the moon, so that’s what I chose.
Framing the Image
With that decision locked in, and knowing that I’d be shooting wide open at f/2.8, the only decision left was ISO, which I set at 2,000. I took a few test exposures and decided this give me the right exposure. Of course I took brackets, but at this point, processing was going to determine the attributes of the image and I knew I had reasonable latitude.
The real artistic choice was getting just the right amount of cloud in just the right space. That was a matter of taking lots of shots, repositioning the camera (and refocusing) as the moon moved across the sky, then culling in post.
Shooting the Blood Moon from Okinawa
Processing the image was mostly a matter of deciding how bright I wanted all the elements to be. The elements, in this cace, were the moon itself, the clouds, the stars, and the blackness of space between the stars.
The blackness of space was made more crisp by crushing the blacks globally, as well as dropping the shadows. That was easy. But even with nice crisp blacks, this image isn’t really special enough with just the clouds and the moon, even though it’s a blood moon, so the stars had to be teased out. The only way to do this without adding lots of noise to the blackness was to boost the highlights strongly (almost 100%). This had the effect of blowing out the moon, so the only way to accomplish the effect I wanted was a bit of ‘old fashioned’ dodge and burn. Of course, this was accomplished in Adobe Lightroom.
Rather than isolate the moon and try to manage highlights in the same image, I decided to make a virtual copy and set the highlights at different levels for each. The level that worked for stars also worked for the clouds. Then, I stacked the two images in Photoshop and simply selected the moon on the ‘bright’ layer in which the moon was blown out, and masked out the moon so that the moon on the second layer could shine through. This was very easy.
Final Thoughts
There are better photos of this blood moon than the one I took. I’m okay with not being the best. I just want to be the best I can be and shoot the cleanest, most beautiful image possible with the equipment I have.
Yes, I’m a ‘professional’ photographer, but not an astro photographer and definitely not a lunar photographer. What I really am is a photographer in Okinawa, sharing the beauty of this awesome island through my own lens and my own perspective, and that beauty includes a blood moon shot from a balcony in Awase.
Awase Seawall
Map link to Awase Seawall where the image was shot.
Google Maps Link to Awase Seawall
