Photos: 'Blood moon' lunar eclipse over Atlanta

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'Blood moon' lunar eclipse over Atlanta

Check out these photos from Wednesday's "blood moon" lunar eclipse.

Staff photographer John Spink encountered early challenges trying to capture Wednesday morning's lunar eclipse. "I went down North Avenue looking in my side-view mirror to see how the moon was lining up with Bank of America Plaza. I ended up shooting this photo with a 2X extender, making it a 600mm." Spink wasn't really happy with it. "I didn't get the building the way I wanted it and the trees were getting in the way, so I moved on."

Spink next moved to the Jackson Street bridge. "There were several people with tripods on the bridge photographing the scene. So I jumped out of my car and decided the moon was too high for the shot I wanted to do, but I made an image of the skyline anyway." The problem was that the moon appeared as "a tiny dot way up there."

Then Spink jumped onto Freedom Parkway where it met International Boulevard exit ramp from the Connector and parked off to the side of the road. "What caught my eye was 191 Peachtree Tower with the pink light inside the columns. I ended up putting on a 500 mm with a 2X extender, making it a 1,000 mm lens. I cranked up the ISO to 512,000 because I needed a fairly fast shutter speed of 200. What makes the closeups of the moon difficult during the eclipse is that you are dealing with what is now the dark side of the moon, which means you need more exposure."

Spink spent about a half hour running up and down the embankment where he'd parked taking different frames of the scene, moving around and trying to line up the moon just right. "I was using a monopod just for mobility and to be quick. I liked this photo because the pink and the columns made it look cool."

Spink crossed the ramp to line up the moon with Westin Peachtree Plaza. "It's one of the most iconic buildings of the Atlanta skyline and I knew with the lights on top of the building, I'd get a good illumination that would equalize with the moon." The eclipse was starting to descend at this point.

At that point, Spink says, it was almost a full eclipse and he was exposing the photo for the moon which was pretty dark.. "The only way you can make the moon look like it has a decent size to it is by using a longer telephoto lens. I would have preferred to have been further back, on the Jackson Street Bridge or thereabouts, but the moon was too high in the sky. Other times of year the moon would be lower and you can include more buildings in your shot, but in this case, you had to get closer and lower to the building in the foreground to make it work." Spink spent from about 5:10 a.m. to just before daybreak on the assignment.

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Staff photographer John Spink encountered early challenges trying to capture Wednesday morning's lunar eclipse. "I went down North Avenue looking in my side-view mirror to see how the moon was lining up with Bank of America Plaza. I ended up shooting this photo with a 2X extender, making it a 600mm." Spink wasn't really happy with it. "I didn't get the building the way I wanted it and the trees were getting in the way, so I moved on."

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