In my excitement to capture this year’s blood moon, I forgot to switch on the tracker—the one that was supposed to keep the moon centered and allow for longer exposures at f/11. It wasn’t until a few minutes before totality that I noticed the mistake, so I only managed to capture several properly tracked shots of the eclipse.
But what first felt like a slip-up turned into an opportunity. I realized that the untracked frames, when combined with the tracked ones, could tell a different story. By merging them together, I ended up with an image that reimagines the blood moon as a fiery meteor streaking across the night sky.
Moments like this remind me that mistakes in photography don’t always spell failure. Sometimes, they push us to see differently and experiment beyond our original plan leading to unexpected images that carry their own kind of magic.
Fantastic effect!