ASTROPHOTOGRAPHER CAPTURES AMAZING FULL SEQUENCE IMAGE OF LONGEST PARTIAL ECLIPSE
Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy has recently took his photography skills to the next level and as always wowed the world with yet another incredible photo. This year McCarthy captured the essence of the longest partial lunar eclipse of the century.
In order to create his masterpiece, the photographer has to stay up until 4 a.m. to shoot thousands of images, which he later then transformed into a beautifully combined artistic photo. Back in May during the lunar eclipse, McCarthy came up with the idea for his latest masterpiece. However geography limited his ability to make the shot happen during the lunar eclipse, but he wasn’t going to miss his opportunity when the partial eclipse came around.
“For this image, due to the time of the eclipse starting and its position in the sky, I was able to capture the entire sequence from start to finish. That enabled me to get a detailed shot during every stage of the eclipse. At first, I had a vision that each image would overlap just enough to create a round shadow- showing the circular shape of Earth's shadow. However, that has been done many times before and I wanted to try something unique. By positioning each image in these positions, I felt it gave the composition a greater sense of depth, and really helped illustrate what we are looking at, which is a shadowed sphere.”
Making sure that he doesn’t miss any crucial moments, McCarthy had set up a three-camera setup in his backyard in Arizona. By having three cameras, he was able to get a wide range of images from different angles which allowed him to capture incredible crisp, clear views of the moon.
He still faced a challenge as the high-altitude clouds threatened to ruin the moment, however determined McCarthy was able to overcome that challenge by using HDR techniques. After gathering his needed images, he had to start combining them for his final masterpiece photo. McCarthy composited together thousands of photos taken during the event to ensure that each moon was rich with detail on both the light and shadow side.