I ran across a picture I took a while back. This, by far, was the most difficult picture that I took...I was chasing after two western swallow tail butterflies involved in a courtship dance above an open grass field...I did it after almost tripping and falling down several times...
Why It was Difficult:
1. Butterflies are fast and totally unpredictable in changing direction
2. 400mm FL view is very narrow on the viewfinder making tracking fast erratic objects like butterflies a real challenge
3. The depth of field is very thin...you've got to nail focus fast and snap the shot fast.
Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 400mm f/5.6L, Canon 25mm extension tube @ 400mm; f/6.3; 1/1250; ISO 800, AI Servo, center point with 8 assists, Case 5
That would probably have to be my Andromeda galaxy image (though a few others are probably in the running).
This required several hours of work to capture the data... and then once I had all the data it would be several weeks worth of work to process the data into this image. This is actually my third iteration of re-processing the data ... having made some serious mistakes when doing my first two attempts. We are own worst critics... so it turns out I'm aware of some flaws in how I processed this version that most non-astrophotographers might never notice (even many other astrophotographers might not notice)... so it makes me want to re-process the data for a 4th iteration (but it was a lot of work so this isn't something I'd approach lightly.)
Similar things could be said of some of my eclipse images... some of my eclipse images of the corona during totality were similarly difficult ... but party due to the rare nature of the event (and me being a nervous wreck trying to make sure that absoultely everything went perfectly in the hours and hours of working trying to set up all the gear (equatorial tracking mounts, telescopes, cameras, computer control to handle the timing and exposure of each shot, all the testing and re-testing in the months prior to the eclipse, etc.) Once the eclipse happened and it was all on auto-pilot, it seems like my Andromeda image was "more work" but I suppose it was really just a different kind of work.
I'm not quite done processing the data in the eclipse images to come up with a final result that I really like. So who knows if I might change my mind about "the most difficult shot I took" until I'm done.
