Those shots are spectacular BRuhling http://badgerandblade.com/vb/member.php/28975-BRuhling
Continuing to improve...I hope. This is now one of my favorites....
Museum Tower by geckotek, on Flickr
I most certainly will never try to repeat something like this but please, educate me of the technique. It looks fantastic.
It started to become difficult in the darker phase because my exposure time was getting into the 10 second range and even just small movement in the camera/tripod would cause blurryness in the photo
Are you sure it wasn't the movement of the moon? When I took eclipse shots it was a struggle even keeping the moon in frame! I had to crank the ISO up way too high and the pictures ended up quite grainy.
A little of both actually. ISO was ok, but the exposure time started to get pretty long, and even tightened down as much as I could go my budget tripod kept slipping a tiny bit due to the weight of the camera body and lens once positioned.
It all sounds like a rocket science to me but mostly the will to wait until 4 AM. I admire you.
You can additionally stabilize the tripod if you hang a plain sack filled with something heavy in it (pebbles, even few bottles of water) beneath the middle part.
My "best" so to speak changes depending on my mood. but I have always liked this, as sometimes less is more. 10 stop neutral density to get a long exposure during the daytime, Canon 15-85 at 15mm on a 60d.