This was me taking a chance on something I had never done before. There was going to be a penumbral lunar eclipse, which is when the moon falls under the diffuse outer shadow of the Earth. It is not as dramatic as a full or partial eclipse as you don’t see a clear line of the shadow of the Earth, but I was hoping that we would get some beautiful tones of orange on a full moon in the middle of our crazy long Calgary summer days, with a bit of light hanging around in the atmosphere until 11 at night.
My goal was to take advantage of that natural light, hopefully create a couple of interesting composites and get creative. We didn’t see the eclipse at its peak since there was just a tiny line of clouds right above the horizon and by the time the moon rose above it, most of it was over. But the moon was still full, so bright and a beautiful orange hue. I did expose for the moon in some of my shots but I quickly realized that I preferred using it as a giant glowing ball of fire in the dark evening sky. It was absolutely amazing. And Britt and Dustin were the perfect people to go on this adventure with, as they fully trusted me and my creative thinking, and they are so in love and comfortable in front of the camera which made for really natural, romantic shots.
To let you in on a little bit of the planning process, here’s the text I sent Britt the night before this session: “It’s 9pm now, so tonight will give you an idea of the light we’ll get. We’ll get the tail end of golden hour depending on when we find a good spot to set up and hopefully the sky gives us some colours, then the moon. Should be really nice.”
I wrote that thinking – chances of all of that happening are slim since you don’t usually get a pink sky and a clear night to see the moon… well it turns out that we got it all and we got a bonus rainbow over downtown. It kinda felt like I was dreaming.
Then the strangest thing happened, a murder of crows started flying around which was a little ominous feeling at first, but then really amazing knowing that Dustin’s last name is Crowe.
This vision really came to life, and then some.
Valerie Richer Photography 