A more accurate title would be “moongazing”, but stargazing sounds infinitely better. On the night of the eclipse we were in Tekapo – the best place in New Zealand to stargaze! It’s an International Dark Sky Reserve due to the minimal amount of light pollution, and the Mount John Observatory takes full advantage of the perfect conditions to play with massive telescopes. And look for planets outside our solar system. This was our only clear night in Tekapo, for the rest of the week it clouded over and we only got the occasional glimpse at the night sky. I’m so glad we made it a late night!

I am consistently impressed with the Fuji X100. Planted on a tripod, the only way I could take a long enough exposure was to manually hold down the shutter release for 40 seconds. The images were pretty dark and I wrote them off, but after a bit of work in Lightroom, I’m quite happy with how they came out! I like this one in particular – the ghostly figure stargazing on the balcony adds a bit of intrigue. Next time I think I’d push the exposure out for a bit longer to get more movement out of the stars.