I got up at 4AM this morning to try and get outside before the super moon started eclipsing and then blood mooning after that.

Last night, I laid out everything I thought I needed for the morning on the table in the living room: the camera bag, a portable chair, a tripod, headlamp, mittens, and a hat. My travel mug was by the coffee maker, which was ready to go.

I got up after turning off the alarm, threw on a insulating shirt under a thick hoodie, jeans, thick work socks, and tennis shoes, and made coffee. I went out in front of the house to look at the sky for clouds- all clear. I came back in, put coffee in the mug, threw everything in the truck, and drove briefly over to my destination.

Since the event was happening to the west, with potential that it might extend down to the horizon, I drove to the westernmost entrance at Hoffmantown Church and parked on the drive near the closed gate. It was a short walk to the park abutting the church’s west parking lot. Across the small park is a bench by a walking trail that faces west, and that was to be my host for these morning hours.

I got there about 4:25, in time to get the tripod up and the camera mounted. The world was mostly quiet except for occasional vehicles quietly swishing by to my right on Harper. And the moon was big and ready to go.

I pointed the camera at the full white orb, entered the manual settings into the camera that Tim, my boss and photog pro, suggested I use to get moon pictures. And I waited. But not for long.

It was a good time. The air was brisk- I got cold from time to time from air slipping up the back of my shirt- but not intolerable. I adjusted my clothes and dealt with it. I swigged my coffee to enjoy its warmth.

And I just kept the camera lens staring at the falling moon, adjusting the tripod every 10 minutes or so to keep the ball in the viewfinder.

I faced a challenge I hadn’t really thought about: my contacts, and especially the one in my dominant (left) eye, kept gumming up and as a result they impaired my ability to really tell if I had the camera in focus. I blinked hard blinks to try and moisten and clean off the lenses, but that fix would usually last for a few minutes, and then the film stuff would return because my eyes were dealing with breezes.

And the moon did it’s thing…

It eclipsed…

And then it went red…

And then dawn crept up behind us, and slowly filling the sky with morning light.

By this time, about 7AM, a cloud bank above the horizon invited the moon into its cover, and the moon disappeared from sight before its plunge over the horizon.

Oddly, it was also about this time that a number of people came to the park’s west side perimeter by me and gawked at the west horizon, presumably to see the heavenly event.

I was finally cold and a bit stiff at this point, and I packed up my gear and enjoyed the walk back to my truck to go home and get ready to go to work.