Here’s the Blood Moon! I captured it from San Francisco Bay Area!

I’m a total amateur when it comes to photography, and very confused about the copious amount of terms in this field. With limited knowledge about shooting nice pictures using a DSLR or my Nikon Coolpix P500 (a CMOS digital camera), I decided to give it a try anyway.

I woke up around 4am today, dressed up in two layers of jackets, grabbed my camera and rushed to the balcony. Ah ha! There it was, the Blood Moon, at its reddest.

It was very chilly, and I was so glad that I was prepared with the layers. I was messing around with different combinations of shutter speed, focus and zooming, and after about 20 minutes, I finally had my first satisfying shot —- a moon that was not as blurry as a fireball.

Feeling a little frustrated, I thought maybe it was really the time for me to learn more on how to shoot a picture… However, no time can be wasted any more, because the moon was starting to get brighter and its redness was fading!

I kept playing around with the combinations, and finally in another 30 minutes, I got a few good ones that I can share with my friends (one of them is the picture in this blog post).

I wrapped up my equipment, shared a few moon shots with my friends and dived back to my warm warm bed.

It was a little hard to get back to sleep and I felt really sleepy when my alarm sang at 7am. But, what a great experience!

I’m so proud of myself and the beautiful moon, 2014 is a good year :)