Me and the bloody moon

 

Don't I wish. 

Nope. Not mine. Do so wish it was.

The night was cool and gorgeous, and the Blood Moon was to be witnessed at a respectable time--not 3:00 a.m., but, well, bedtime.

I don't fault the camera, but the user's a loser who doesn't take the time to know how to do what the camera can. Like my computer. My guess is I know about 5% of what this desktop can do. I'm happy with what I have, and I don't want to confuse myself to any worse degree than I am already confused. So, just don't go there. The result is, I don't have any shots like the one above.

Here's what I have.

Looks yellow, gold maybe--almost orange--that'd be fitting for the little city down the road. But here's our friend just up from the horizon (see the wires, the streetlight, and the vague form of some construction stuff across the tracks from our place. For a rank amateur, not bad, but no sight of blood.

Cleared of all earthly attachments, this one. Kinda' cool. Yellow moon, not red. 

Some of the homage to Orange City fading as Mr. Moon ascends into a sky that's ever-darkening. 

Here's where the rank amateur shows up. What's recorded here is the first assault of the earth's shadow, like an acid wash over the left bottom flank. A good shooter would finagle things so that the moon's flora and fauna wouldn't be washed out--a good shooter. 

Better, but at this point I'm almost ready to throw in the towel, go in the house, and, tomorrow morning, look for beauties like the one at the top of the page.  And then--I don't know why--things began looking up (bad unintended pun). 

As the shadow mounts, the camera seems, almost totally on its own, to want to show me the whole picture. Some of the moon's detail reappears, and we're little more than half way through the eclipse. And now we're well into this, but, as yet, no blood. 

And yet, but a sliver.

And then, finally, failure. When the moon turned (almost) beet red, I got nothing, except this--the only shot that even suggests a red moon.

And it's from my phone. 

Maybe next time.