Night of the Eclipse


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The night of the Lunar Eclipse we got take-out from our favorite burrito place and walked towards Prospect Park to try and find a spot of darkness where we could see nature's show.  As many of you know, I've lived in Brooklyn for 26 years. I moved here because I couldn't afford Manhattan anymore; but I really came to love it because it was an escape from the crowds and the stress of being in the middle of it all.  I used to walk the streets, of my then semi-safe neighborhood, at night with my Cannon AE-1 Program and hand hold my camera to get the blurred, dark, moody images that I loved.  Since then, Brooklyn has become the epicenter of all I was fleeing when I left Manhattan and finding quiet, or darkness, or tranquility, is rare here.  But on that night I saw people pausing and waiting, and even stopping, to look at the shadow crossing the moon. You could feel everyone holding their breath each time lines of clouds blocked our view and then exhaling when they passed and the moon reappeared redder and even more remarkable than before. We were sitting on the lawn in the Park when the whole thing turned that warm and spooky red and for just a moment it felt like the small town it used to be, where people might come out at night to just quietly look at the sky.  Of course, once the clouds came and covered the moon for real, we looked around and realized that we were sitting in field of smart phone screens - one of which was mine since I shot this with my phone.  No filter here, but it is printed on a special paper where the fibers are visible.


© Meryl Salzinger Photography 2016