Australian Photojournalist and Landscape Photographer – Once in a Red Moon

I’ve not posted anything personal for many moons (of moons’s moons), so this is just a “me” blog post. Silly, feel good.

And because I was told by more than one person (Facebook family messenger group) that I needed to see this “Blood Red Moon” that is happening at 7 or 9pm” tonight! (that was last night). “It will be amazing, chance of a lifetime, watch it with the kids!”

Well 7 would have been ok, Layls is 6 and Louis is 8 now, but that wasn’t happening at 7, so I assumed it must be 9 then and passed it off. Why 7 or “9” by the way crazy fam? pfft, I have no idea, and I don’t question my family, it’s not worth the fight.

One Layla’s asleep, a Louis is tucked in and ready to drop, a few of my toes are still missing, it’s time for bed. Then my loudmouth neighbor shouts out “Have you seen the moon!?” full volume from his house next door.

Louis get’s up and run’s outside! It looked much the same as before though, but I will admit, it had started to eclipse a bit!

My neighbour ACTUALLY didn’t know where the moon was ha, which was what he was asking (the world), so I pointed him to the opposite side of the sky! Ha…just for jokes! 🙂

I told him that “this is one of those things that some people can die of shock from because of how bloody awesome it is!” But neither he nor Louis had ever seen an eclipse, and they are pretty cool, so they were super-duper excited, cute! 😉

Anyway, it was a clear night, bloody freezing – I was still in my shorts and t-shirt. “brrrrrr”

So Louis and I decided to face the storm, stick it out, thirsty for blood. Louis tried attempting cartwheels, in his pajamas, in the pitch black back yard, on wet grass, and I just slowly froze towards death. My limbs were starting to get frostbite, they were going all purple and red and pink, and green. But i had been staring at the moon for so long I think I may have imagined that…and then Louis randomly says (very excitedly )”This is the best night ever!”

I thought, “Really? Ever? and then settled on “Matt, don’t question him, he’s family, and why not just get a real camera out and take a pic or two, with a tripod even!

We have a Blood Red Moon “allegedly” on it’s way, the “pro Camera phone” is frustratingly useless at shooting even a bright moon, let alone a potentially quite dark, Blood Red version, and knowing very well that your longest lens is a 90mm, I acted on one of those “this is a good opportunity to see what you can do with “not exactly the correct tools but still a good carpenter”‘s tools, try and push some creative flair in the Lightroom, and…well, as I mentioned initially, it must have been at least “many years” since I’ve made an effort on any non-work photo session”. And yes I do feel bad. I tried to charge my kids, “if they want professional photos taken, then…!” but they just ended up getting me to pay for it all, somehow.

Admittedly, I’d seen some pretty insane photos of the moon over the years, in various shapes and forms, and it’s mostly the huge close-ups that would be the ultimate goal, however (as I don’t have the Hubble Telescope to shoot with) I just want to see at least a few craters clearly…and maybe if they were also covered in blood or something, then even better. But I am a huge Sci-fi lover as well, so all that contemplation gave me more grounded ideas…and I’m apparently a professional photographer, no moon will beat me! Grrrrr

So with possibly only a few mintues of nice moon action to go/come, I decided to frantically throw a “pro moon shoot” together. I run like a well oiled machine when I have about 1.5 minutes to get 1.5 pieces of gear together! 🙂

Honestly, I was not expecting/assuming/hoping that I would be able to take a “National Geographic centerfold” worthy moon photo at all, but, as professional photographers who, let’s face it, outside of all the paid shoots we do where we use our “Real cameras”, only really use fancy phone cameras as cameras, we (I) really need to try to at least make the effort to do more personal work, even if it’s just a Bloody moon, for heck’s sake.

It really doesn’t take much to realise why a nice pro camera, even like my trusty old Fuji X-T2’s, are so big compared to a phone camera.

Trust me, the moon is not a simple task to show off, I’ve tried numerous times for client requests at weddings and never really ended up getting anything very fancy. So with a vision in mind, some average tools, an expectation of a few hours of fun editing maybe (which i actually really enjoy), Moon challenge #4005 accepted.

So these are a few close to original exposures that I got up early this morning to edit ( I had to make that very clear, as I am NOT a morning person), and maybe one or two that were “inspired” by originals just edited…and then thinking about Mars, and Zombies, and the apocalypse. 

But unless you are just going to just show ONE photo off, which I would say would be ideal of such a quick moment like a Lunar Eclipse, then you really need zombies and Starcraft and red cordial to inspire variation, as you sift through 50 photos that are all exactly the same (many not in focus either).

Or, I need to work on my Moon Posing I think? Maybe next Blood Moon.

And, I wouldn’t exactly say “Blood Red”people, more like what I assume Mars is like…”Red Ocher” or “Apocalyptic Orange”. It looked cool though!

Just a bit of fun anyway, that I should do more often….or not. 🙂 lol