03/12/19 Blood Moon Eclipse over Little Rock–Featured Arkansas Photography
- At March 12, 2019
- By paul
- In Featured Arkansas Photography
- 0
Blood Moon Eclipse, over Little Rock Arkansas. Taken with a Nikon D810A and Nikon 200-400 lens over a 1 and 1/2 hour time frame.
On the evening of January 20th, 2019, there was an excellent situation for astro photographers. There would be a “super” moon combined with a “blood” moon. The super moon denotes the larger size and greater brightness of the moon, and the blood moon refers to the blood red/in this case orange color of the moon. Full lunar eclipses happen often, but the combination of a blood and super moon during a full lunar eclipse is rare.
I have tried multiple times to capture a blood moon, but have been thwarted due to weather, or poor photographic technique. On this night, the sky remained clear throughout the entire eclipse and offered excellent viewing opportunities.
For the capture, I used my Nikon D810A, which has a slightly better high ISO dynamic range over my D850. I did sacrifice a considerable amount of resolution in doing this, but I preferred to have a great chance of capturing the overall full eclipse. The results were impressive. I used the Nikon 200-400 F4 lens at 400mm the entire time of the shoot. I varied my ISO range from 800 to 5000, and found the best results were when I took slightly longer exposures in the ISO 1200 to 2500 range.
Written for www.photosofarkansas.com on 03/11/19, please do not reproduce any of this content without express permission from Paul Caldwell
08/05/12 Featured Arkansas Photography–Early morning view of Red Rock and the Middle Buffalo River Valley
Taken with a Fuji S2, iso 200, Nikkor 85mm 1.8 @ F 5.6, 1/60th of a sec exposure.
While on a road trip across the Ozark mountains near Mt Judea Arkansas, I came around a corner in the road and saw this view. The entire valley of the Buffalo River was swathed in fog and only the top of Red Rock was sticking out. Red Rock was at one time one of the most popular rock climbing spots in Arkansas. Recently due to private land issues and the fact that newer more challenging areas have opened up the climbing craze has passed Red Rock by. You can still get very close to the base of the formation or view easily from a distance. It stands out over the valley of Vendor and Hwy 374 courses right along the base. I know longer know if there is a road open to the summit, but if you can find one the view would be most impressive!
A matted view of the same image.