The Lunar Eclipse Over South Africa on 15 June 2011 captured as never before by South African Photographer Mitchell Krog

South African Photographer Mitchell Krog, based in the beautiful Magaliesburg region has once again pulled something magical out of his photographic hat. Mitchell, a multi award winning photographer, is no stranger to the night skies and has spent much of the last 5 years photographing them. On Wednesday evening the 15th June 2011 a lunar eclipse event occured over much of the Southern Hemisphere and had sky watchers all over the world outside to witness this magical event.

In South Africa it is currently winter and up on the highveld in the Magaliesburg region it gets especially cold at night. Braving the cold weather, Mitchell headed out to capture his 4th lunar eclipse and decided to try something different. Instead of just focusing on close up images of the moon, Mitchell decided to go much wider and set up one of his camera’s with an extreme wide angle lens.

What came out of his camera was nothing short of amazing and has certainly trumped a plethora of lunar eclipse images all over the web. Mitchell describes this effect, “A combination of heavy dew fall and misting from the very cold weather is probably what caused the camera to capture this, it is an amazing optical effect like I’ve never seen before and I’ve spent hundreds of nights out photographing the night skies. What I find amazing about this image is that, optical effect or not, it clearly shows the moon sitting in shadow surrounded by the blue glow of Earth’s light. It’s easy for people to jump out and say it’s manipulated but it most certainly is not, this is direct from camera to screen but I’m so accustomed to critics and competitors trying any avenue to demoralize or discredit.”

All we can say is we’re amazed with this image and it already seems to be circulating all over the web and being very much WOW’d.