On a surprisingly warm winters evening, the 27th of July saw the longest solar eclipse of this century take place. For a total time of 1h43min, light from our closest planet was obscured, casting the moon in darkness for a while, before turning a strange copper / red shade. It was literally a once in a lifetime experience.

And what was I doing? Trying to capture it on camera - of course.

10 second exposure / F4 / ISO 100

Since I don't own a decent zoom lens (I sometimes borrow a 150-500mm from a friend), shooting an actual close-up of the eclipse was going to be impossible. For no apparent reason, I decided that shooting from my local beach would be the best option, as it could make for a far more interesting photo - as opposed to maybe having a tree from my garden in the foreground.

Clearly, I wasn't alone in this thinking, as hundreds of other amateur photographers were scattered about up and down the shores. Guess great minds think alike?

This is about as much as you can get out of the 24-105mm. That extra bright pixel beneath is the planet Mars.

In my usual eager fashion, I arrived at the beach an hour before the eclipse was due to start. This was actually quite a happy accident, as the majority of photos in this article were taken before any large celestial changes. The full moon was quite spectacular, and helped me to get a few different exposures.

Not wanting to be restricted to just one lens, I had made sure to bring my Tokina 10-17mm fisheye along, hoping that the blood red illumination would make for a great wide shot. Sadly, this wasn't to be the case, but I still made use of it for one shot.

In total, I spent close to three hours on the beach, with the majority of the time spent waiting for something interesting to happen. Eventfully, I had packed my camera gear away and found a grassy spot to lie down on and admire the eclipse. A few photos to remember the occasion by are good enough anyway.

Now, all that's left to do is wait for the moon to disappear again, so that I can get back to some more starscapes... hint hint. Stay tuned.

And yes, the title of this article is an obvious homage to Creedence Clearwater Revival.

I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today

Equipment Setup:

Camera	Canon 6D
Lens	Canon 24-105 f4 L Series / Tokina 10-17mm
Processing	Lightroom CC
Location	Umhlanga Rocks, South Africa

DISCLAIMER: All photos and writing are my own original work.