Lunar Eclipse

I did get up this morning to take some shots of the lunar eclipse.


This was the best photo of the lot but it is still much "softer" than I would typically like to see my photos. Some possible explanations for this:

• I recently lost my prescription glasses, and I'm waiting for replacement to be ready. So I am using drugstore "readers" which are not nearly as good to see by as my prescriptions. So I had trouble determining whether the camera was in sharp focus or not. The camera won't focus by itself on a full lunar eclipse because it is too dark.
  
• I had placed a 1.4x extender on my longest lens, so this extended the 400mm focal length to 560mm. But as I think about it now, I think that may have caused some softness. I think I might have been better off just using the lens as is, and then cropping it to what I wanted.

Thanksgiving Cactus / If Death is Kind

I have found the Sara Teasdale poem "If Death is Kind" haunting. When I took a pic of the Thanksgiving Cactus blooming today, it brought her poem to mind.


Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.

We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.