A Photo of My Girlfriend, the Lunar Eclipse, Mars, and the Milky Way

I normally love to plan my photos and I would have liked to plan a cool shot with yesterday’s moon eclipse. However, when I planned my current trip to Kyrgyzstan, I didn’t realize I would be there with the lunar eclipse of 2018 (bad planning, I know).

I’m staying at the capital of Kyrgyzstan Bishkek. Without a plan, I just went out to a random place out of the city to see the blood moon. I brought my 400mm but I couldn’t really find a cool composition or foreground because the moon was so high up in the sky. The full eclipse was visible at 1:30 am here.

What I did notice though, was the extremely bright star just below the moon when the eclipse happened. It wasn’t a star at all — it was Mars.

Also, because of the darkness of the eclipse, the Milky Way was easily visible. So I decided to do something different than all the crazy telephoto shots of the moon eclipse. This is a shot at 15mm in which you can see the lunar eclipse (red moon), the extremely bright “star” Mars (orange), and the Milky Way next to hit. I asked my girlfriend to pose in the middle. It was a beautiful sight!

The photo is a single exposure with the Sony a7R III and Laowa 15mm f/2 FE at f/2, 20s, ISO 3200.

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