On January 31st 2018 an incredibly rare event occurred. For the first time in 35 years a blue moon has synced up with a supermoon and a total lunar eclipse, or blood moon because of its red hue.

Exhausted from a hard week of work I was sooo tired. I had to choose between my comfortable, warm, new mattress or a night standing in the cold by myself with my camera pointing at the moon!

Of course I chose the moon!

The moon was so incredibly bright, and then darkness slowly crept across it as the earth blocked the sun's reflection.

Once the moon had gone completely dark it turned a shade of deep red from the refraction of the sun's light around the planet.

It was eerie but beautiful to behold!

I knew there would be hundreds of shots of the moon as it progressed in and out of the eclipse. I didn't really want to get the same shot everyone else did. I was trying to work out where to go to shoot it, I really wanted to get the city of Melbourne in a landscape shot with the moon.

I finally settled on Albert Park Lake, where I could do a great long exposure and capture the city, with the reflection of the lights, and the moon all in one! I was there from around 12am to 2am.

The shot was around 3.5 minutes long to smooth out the water and pick up some of the detail in the darkness. I used my iPhone torch to illuminate the tree and bench for a while so the camera could pick up some detail.

Given that I was using a 12mm (24mm equiv) wide angle lens to capture the scenery and a long exposure, the moon was a little ping pong ball in the top right and smudged due to the rotation of the moon and earth.

The shot of the moon above was taken with a long 150mm (300mm equiv) lens to bring out the detail as best I was able to manage (need an even longer zoom!!).

In Lightroom I brought up the shadows and smoothed out the noise, then in Photoshop combined the two shots to create the image at the top of this post.

I'm looking forward to my next chance to shoot this on January 31, 2037!!!