By Cheryl Lindo Jones in Picture a Day — 03 Mar 2026

pictures of the day: mar 3

Earlier this morning (around 3 AM Pacific), I took a few pictures of the lunar eclipse.

Blurred foliage in the foreground, lit with ambient light from the front of my house, with a partially red lunar eclipse in the background — Fuji GFX50s, adapted Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6

This is the best I could do, framing some of the lavender plant by the front door in the foreground for some added visual interest. 😛

I also took a picture at full zoom:

Square cropped image of black sky with a lunar eclipse in the center, already starting to transition out of peak — Fuji GFX50s, adapted Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6

I almost missed it because I had skimmed an article about when the eclipse would start, and when peak would be, and somehow got it in my head that peak would last much longer than it did. Luckily I went outside a little after 3 AM and got a few shots. But I didn't have a tripod handy (I never do 😝), so I did my best handholding long-ish shutter speeds, or made do with short shutter speeds and brought up shadows in post.

I also took a few pictures with my iPhone 16 Pro Max to see what it could do. Annoyingly, there was a super bright LED street light in the way, so I had to crop it out, and edit out an ugly power line in the background. 🤦‍♀️ This phone picture is ridiculously overexposed (I toned it down in post as much as I could), but the result is alright. There are even a couple stars visible.

Lunar eclipse, already partially transitioning out of peak, some overexposed, out of focus, lavender stalks in the foreground — iPhone 16 Pro Max, 5x zoom

One of these days I'll have a better set up for astrophotography...

picture of the day: mar 1

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