Dowth eclipse and silhouettes

Photographing ancient monuments at nighttime has long been a passion for me. I've been doing it for about 20 years. One of the things about photographing a huge cairn like the passage-tomb of Dowth is that the monument is in complete darkness, unless there's a full moon. This morning's full moon was in total eclipse when I took this photo. Instead of leaving the monument in silhouette, I decided to try some creative lighting, using a camera flash. As you can see, I paced around the base of the mound (in the darkness) during this long exposure and triggered the flash several times to light it up. One of the downsides of this method is that you create a silhouette of yourself (or, in this case, several!). In this case, I think it works. One can imagine a solemn procession of ancient astronomer druids pacing around the mound under a blood red moon in ancient prehistory. This was taken at 5.18am, during the total phase of the lunar eclipse of 21st January 2019.