Capital blood moonCapital blood moon  

Every year I jot down a list of blood moons, eclipses and other significant astronomical events in my paper calendar. Yes, I still use a paper calendar. Moving on. For the March 2025 March lunar eclipse, aka the blood moon, aka the worm blood moon, aka whatever the media calls it blood moon, I had the idea of aligning it with the capital. That composition has been on my list for years. I’ve never seen it before. After reviewing its path across the night sky, the hard part was that the angle above the horizon when the eclipse moon would be at maximum was high. Approximately 50 degrees above the horizon, which is pretty high considering how I wanted to align the moon with the Eagle at the top of the Idaho State Capital building. I’d have to be pretty close to it to angle my lens as such. No better way to feel my age with a stiff neck from craning my head back to look up at it lol. 

Eclipse map

https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/moon/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-march-2025-total-lunar-eclipse/

The night of:

So, I was looking forward to it for weeks. And we had wonderfully clear skies the week leading up to the lunar eclipse. I had the next couple days off from my professional job and I was ready for a late night lunar eclipse chase. However, that nice weather gave way to cloudy forecast on the day of the eclipse I had resolved to loosing out on this event and getting some much needed sleep. Fast forward to sunset on the day of the eclipse, I double checked the forecast and saw that there was a significant chance of cloud clearing right at eclipse maximum. I contemplated skipping out on it and getting some rest. However, I knew I’d be much happier if I pushed on and went out to capture it. So I packed my photo bag and prepared to leave at 1145pm. 

I after arriving at the capital around midnight, I walked to the spot I planned on taking photos and found another photographer standing around the Capital. I approached him and discovered we had the same plan! Rarely do I stumble upon another photographer doing weird things like being away in the middle of the night to take a photo of a moon lol. Was super fun to know I wasn’t alone in this crazy

I had my Sony a7iii that I had a tamron 70-300 on and Sony a6400 with a 85mm on. The a6400 was set to do a Timelapse, while I kept nimble on my feet with the a7iii. The unfortunate part is I had only 30% battery with the a6400, which is already notoriously bad with battery life. Moving around with my a7 allowed me to catch the eclipse just after clouds cleared, just after 1am. The eclipse maximum was at 1254am, which meant the initial plan I had wasn’t going to work with the trailing cloud cover as seen in the Timelapse. Far too often my tripod grows roots and I don’t move. I get stuck in Timelapse mode. But having the two cameras help break that bad habit. 

Planning:

Using the PhotoPills app I stuck a pin on the capital, adjusted for the pins altitude to correct for the height of the Capital  building. Next I set the timing for the maximum eclipse time. One of my favorite sites for that is timeanddate.com. Next, is a process of moving the photographer pin to find a spot that aligned the eagle at the top with the moon and the angle that I was trying to achieve. 

PhotoPills planning

The outcome:

I’m pretty happy with this photo considering 6hrs before I was not going to go out for the event at all. I merged an hdr stack of 4 photos for the building in Adobe Lightroom. Then in photoshop,  I combined the building exposure with a single focused exposure of the moon so that both could be in focus and sharp. 
 

In the end, this experience was a rewarding reminder of the beauty of perseverance and the thrill of capturing celestial events, especially when they align so perfectly with our earthly landmarks. Thanks for reading. Hope your sunrise/sunsets are vibrant and your night skies are clear.