The blood moon in September 2015 was especially impressive because it was also the closest super moon in 2015. There are 3 super moons in 2015 and they occur when the moon is full and in its closest rotation to the earth. To make it a blood moon the full moon becomes eclipsed by the earth. The last time this happened I think was in 1982 and the next one should be about 2033. Hopefully you didn’t miss this one or you will have to wait for a while. 😉
Photographing the blood moon is especially difficult. Normally a full moon is bright enough to photograph hand held but with a blood moon or eclipsed moon it is so dark that it requires a very long shutter. I was using about a 2.5 – 3 second exposure and ISO of 1000. The next thing that makes it difficult is clouds. When I was shooting it there were very thin clouds that moved pass the moon making the shots look more blurry than they should be. Wind and camera shake were the next challenge. Even on my sturdy tripod my 600mm lens sometimes move a little in the wind. A trick to making the moon look bigger in any photo is to put something in the foreground that is actually a long ways away from from you and than zoom in to put it next to the moon. This makes the moon appear bigger. In my shot I used the mountains in the background and made them become the foreground by zooming in. You can see how much bigger the moon looked when I did this. Of course this was also helped by my having a 600mm lens but you can pull of the same thing with a 200mm.
Hope you enjoyed this post. Happy Mooning.
