Dear Blipland...

THANK YOU!!!

Wow.

I never, ever, ever expected such an amazing response to my last Blip. Wow.

I would like to say thank you (in no particular order, list complete as of 12.22.10, 6:26 p.m.) to:
iphonephotoaday,
airborneskygod,
rainie,
narabug,
brickmaker,
azlee,
cameos,
odeyrandom,
JackyCowper,
peterhodge,
jenB,
msh,
kiwilizzie,
catherinelacey,
TeeJay,
wayfarer,
taexalia,
walkingMarj,
clarabel,
BlackRoseAshes,
Gazimp,
sopspics,
pyropeck,
Once,
KathGordon,
increase,
schlimm,
chamberlainjohn,
cabbagetree,
kirstymcgee,
mollyblobs,
jkj10,
rxs,
cvbphotos,
bigred1977,
shedmonkey,
mly,
SJA,
theskink,
Gillipaw,
grace,
mattleach,
Instography,
twigs,
missymoo,
dianedobb,
Dotty,
RJHaas,
Gripja,
mummyandkatie,
Kriszeroseven,
bugsman,
AmErica,
besideherself,
kayp,
WanderingGypsie,
longshanks,
jimchmst,
Appreciation,
chocolatelover,
Amalarian,
peopletwitcher,
pddesigns,
tobeon,
IngunnInOslo,
bri,
pixelsmiths,
marialee,
rtn,
shirleygrant,
caffeine,
traceyflowerpot,
Rioja,
maxellis,
experimentalist,
2DOrNot2D,
OurLifeinPhotos,
kaybee,
beveridge,
andpieces,
fiona64,
mooncoin,
hebsjournal,
ionnature,
Adda,
turnx3,
cracker,
hrubieszowianka,
horrigans,
katjatate,
William,
& hebsauntyval,
for all of the lovely comments!

What started as a cloudy night turned into a gorgeous, clear (and cold!) opportunity to record the eclipse. I hadn't intended to take photos, but after some prodding from Mum, I decided to make an event of it.



Several of you have asked how I orchestrated Monday's blip, so I'll do my best at explaining:

Step 1: @jimchmst: Open wallet.
Step 2: Possibly grit teeth/cry/scream.
Step 3: Purchase a plane ticket to Alaska. (No, kidding! No plane tickets necessary.)


I did some consulting with my crystal ball (Okay, fine, Google, if you must know...) and found a table showing the times when the eclipse was going to be at each of the 12 phases, supposedly correct for AK time. (There are 12 phases in a lunar eclipse, did you know that? I didn't before Monday. It's pretty cool and possibly worth a Wikipedia trawl.) In Alaska, it ran from approximately 8:30-2:30. I set 12 alarms, and popped a movie in for the wait. I checked the window occasionally, and I'm glad I did, because it turned out that my little table wasn't exactly accurate.

For the actual photo taking, I popped my big lens (70-300mm) on my camera, and put the camera on a tripod. Then I ventured outside with my camera (too cold to leave it out-of-doors for long) every time the moon appeared to have changed enough to warrant another photo, having scrapped the not-very-accurate chart. I zoomed to 300mm, and fiddled with the shutter speed until I got it right each time. In every photo, I left the f-stop as low as possible, f/5.6, and ISO at 800 (it seemed like a good round number, big enough to make short-ish shutter speeds and little enough to keep the noise down, though the d3oo does have a wonderfully low level in the higher numbers...) All told, I took some 200 odd photos, most of them over- or under-exposed. I was planning on having 12 photos, one for each of the phases, but it was really cold outside, and I got tired... so I cut off at the midway point, and ended up with 8 photos instead of 6.

For the processing part: I had tried to line up the moon progressively from top left to bottom right, but since I was coming in with my camera in between every shot, that didn't end up working so well. In the end, I used the last photo (the orange-y moon) as a base for the rest, because the moon was in shadow for that one, the shutter speed was 1 second, and so there were visible stars in that one. I opened the 8 final photos in Photoshop, and then cut out each moon in a little square and pasted it on top of the 8th photo. Then I squished them all together, hoped my freehanded line was straight, and merged all the layers. Then voila! I uploaded it to Blip.

Again, thank you all so very very very much! I was so very happily surprised when I got back onto Blip and saw all the wonderful comments! It was very unexpected! I'm still reeling a little bit. You all are going to make me big-headed! ;)

But anyways, I'll wrap this up ? it's by far my longest Blip write-up ever; I really hope I didn't bore you! THANK YOU AGAIN!!! (: (: (: Blip is easily the most wonderful, friendly, and supportive group of people ever!

Love always,
redridergirl.



P.S.: Yeah, I accidently held the sign upside-down... But then I decided the whole thing would be cooler upside-down, too. Nobody likes a sore neck.

P.P.S.: Sorry for the weird face! I don't do self-portraits well... and kind of scared to post this! It's a pretty awful photo, after yesterday!