Once in a Blue Moon…Once again !!

Blood-Red Moon in her full glory !

Once in a blue Moon………once again !

Friends, This year’s very first month, was unique…celestially I mean ! Two full moons in a month , A total Lunar eclipse of the moon on 31^st January, and an opportunity to witness blood-red moon………we photographers cannot miss this opportunity.

Yesterday, the weather God’s were benevolent……..no clouds……….! But the pollution could play spoil-sport at any time………but everything was in order and we set out for a date with the moon !

The place we chose was on the spur of moment……..Old Dhamani road, leading to Bamani, a small village just on the outskirts of sangli. The Sun was setting on the western horizon, leaving behind reddish orange hue behind……..! Lot of farmers, students, were returning home, on their motor cycles……….zooming past us !   After about 10 minutes, a faint presence of the moon could be seen on the eastern horizon……! However for we photographers, it was not enough to focus our cameras, as most of our cams focus poorly dim lit objects. The pollution added to this lack of light……..!  Slowly curious people gathered around us and started asking us, what the hell we three were doing at this unearthly hour in darkness. One person incredulously asked whether we are from Government department who measure the land for their record.  He was worried as the place we were standing belonged to his friend . We allayed his fears and set out to look for Moon…….Now she was turning Red………..and slowly but surely the shadow of earth started spreading across the disc…..turning it in to a reddish orange ball……..!

When shooting this phenomenon, we go on shooting spree as even after shooting lots of images, we may get  few images that are worth show-casing…..( any photographer who says that all his images come out perfect……is lying…take it from me……! )

As we were shooting, an unexpected event happened……a city-bus rambled past us and went towards old Dhamani….and in few minutes returned back to where we were , on its way back to Sangli……The headlights of the bus lit up the small almost barren tree near my left side……and as luck  would have it, I clicked my camera pointing towards moon, at this moment. When I saw the replay on the LCD screen……it was a something beautiful……barren trees lit up by the bus lights with a Red Moon on eastern horizon……!

Later on we were at the spot for almost three hours and recorded the entire celestial drama in our camera…….!

I had clicked a good pic of Moon in her reddish orange glory. When I came home photo artiste in me woke up to a reality that If I can combine the two images ……one of the small barren trees and the darkness lit up by bit small Red Moon and bus head-light…and the full disc of the Red Moon clicked by me…….low and behold ……the image you see here is the result of this effort…….!