Nature is stochastic, every changing… Plan in advance, and more often than not, nothing is as you planned… Astronomical events may occur like clockwork, but nature often intervenes, throwing a thick blanket of clouds over the proceedings. From time to time, though, everything falls into place, and though the scene before me was visible for only a handful of minutes before twilight washed away the stars and the Milky Way, to see our island of stars slowly appear as the Moon’s brilliance faded was an incomparable experience. Photographed May 26, 2021, at Boot Arch, Alabama Hills, Eastern Sierra, California.
From 9:40pm to 1:40am on July 27, 2018, the camera never moved from this spot at Amberd Fortress, never shook in its resolve to capture the entire sequence of the total lunar eclipse. The 23 images of the Moon are taken 10 minutes apart, beginning with a full moon at 10:00pm (leftmost moon), and progressing through the partial eclipse, which began at 10:24pm, the total eclipse, which began at 11:30pm, and the end of the total eclipse at 1:13am. The last image is at 1:40am, during the partial phase at the end of the eclipse. Almost exactly at midnight, with the Moon barely visible, the Milky Way made a grand appearance, and a 30-second exposure (with Amberd Fortress lit by portable lights) serves as the background.
Another cloudless sunset at Yosemite found me shying away from Tunnel View and its crowds... Here, on one bend of the sinewy Merced River, I found the perfect spot! Photographed March 2019.
