I was driving to work one morning recently and as I headed south down the road near home, the moon was quite low in the sky. It was partway through the phases and the angle of the sunlight on its surface provided a lot of texture on the surface. I was driving to work so was not immediately in a position to stop but the drive to work is short so, as soon as I got to the parking lot, I took out the camera. The moon was low above the roof of the office, so I had to move a bit to get an angle on it. The trees were also in the way, so I decided to incorporate them rather than remove them. Then it was into the office.
My El Centro wildlife encounters continued after the owls had been photographed. A hawk showed up on a utility pole close to us at one point and, since no jets were landing, I was happy to take its photo. Then I realized that the moon was rising not far away, and a short movement allowed me to bring the two into closer alignment. With the long lens, the focus depth was narrow, so I took shots of the bird and shots of the moon. When I got home, a little focus stacking allowed me to make both sharp to show how it looked to me at the time I was there.
I have had a couple of work trips that took me to LA in the recent past (how recent may depend on when this gets posted), and the weather has not been great for either of them. The second one coincided with some pretty horrendous weather for the region and our approach to LAX was a pretty bumpy one. We actually landed from the ocean side which is pretty unusual for LAX. The crew prepared the cabin for landing early and I decided the view of the cloud tops from the storm were worthy of video rather than stills. Here is the resulting video of our approach.
For some reason, I recently came back to an old photo I took of a Delta Connection CRJ900 as it climbed out of O’Hare. It had climbed right by the moon as it was rising in the eastern sky towards the end of the day. I had liked the photo at the time but now I was thinking about how to do a better job of editing it. Now I have been using the masking tools in Lightroom a lot more, I figured I could take different approaches for the jet and the background. The results were a lot better than my original efforts and I quite like how it now looks.
On one day, I had an overflight from both of the initial 777X test airframes. The second one went straight over the house in less than ideal conditions but the first came just south of us if a little higher than is sometimes the case for aircraft heading back to Boeing Field. What I noticed in time was that the moon was on the flight path. Not much of a moon to be fair but the moon nonetheless. It crossed it quite nicely!
I was skimming through some photos and saw one of the moon I liked. It made me see what others I had shot over the years. I used to shoot the moon a lot when we lived in Chicago but haven’t done so much since. One shot is from California as the moon was setting over the hills while the sun was coming up. Others have involved cloudy nights that make for unusual shadows. I also decided to make a bit of an edit to one of the shots based on a picture I saw on someone’s shelf on a video I was watching. One for the Star Wars fans out there.
The combination of the Super Moon, the blue moon and the lunar eclipse was something a lot of people were interested in. Sadly, we were due to have a cloudy night so none of the excitement was going to be on show. As the sun was setting at the beginning of the evening that this was all due to happen, I was walking out of the office at the same time the moon was rising. At this point we still had a clear sky. I hadn’t planned anything but I did have a camera to hand so grabbed a few shots for the hell of it.
I decided to try and bracket for an HDR shot. The twilight meant there was something closer to an even exposure between the foreground and the background than you normally manage with a moon shot but it was still a wide range. HDR gave a bit more to play with. Then I headed home and the clouds rolled in.
We live to the east of some hills that border the San Francisco Bay area. On a number of occasions when I have been heading to the bay, I have seen the moon setting over the hills and thought that it would make a good shot. Of course, at those times I either don’t have the camera or I am not in a position to take a picture. I regularly use an app on my phone called The Photographer’s Ephemeris that gives information on sun and moon angles for any location. The shot I was after was to have the full moon setting behind the hills just after sunrise with the early light on the hill tops.
This happens once a month but having it occur when I am not constrained by work requirements is a different thing. It turned out, though, that the combination I was after was going to occur on the morning of Thanksgiving. Excellent. Of course, did I remember to set an alarm? Nope. I woke up and realized I had missed it. The following day the conditions were similar but an hour later. I decided to give it a go anyway. The result is not quite what I wanted but it is okay. However, the sun was way too high by the time the moon hit the tops of the hills. I will definitely try and do this again some time.
A lot has been made of super moon events recently. While they have garnered a lot of attention, in truth the moon has been only fractionally larger than normal. Catching the moon low to the horizon will magnify it far more than the small change in distance manages. However, I am a sucker for a moon shot so I decided to try and find some high ground nearby to see this thing come up.
What I hadn’t counted on was the residual heat from the day. I stacked up the 500mm with a 1.4x teleconvertor on the tripod and awaited the arrival of the moon. It started to rise up and I really liked the view with the grass of the hillside ahead of me shadowing it as it rose. However, it was clear from looking through the viewfinder that the heat haze was a big problem. I got a few shots but they are not the clearest I have ever managed with the detail being heavily impacted by the shimmer in the atmosphere.
I did shoot a bit of video as well. The reason for the video was that I wanted to show the gentle wisps of cloud that drifted across the face of the moon as it rose. With the long lens combination, the moon actually moves quite quickly across the frame. I thought this looked pretty interesting. What I hadn’t appreciated at the time was that the video also dramatically illustrates the heat haze. Therefore, below is some footage of the moon at various stages of its progression supported by the sound of crickets on the hillside.
An evening flight out of SeaTac was my way home on a recent trip. We were due to take off after sunset so I hadn’t anticipated having the camera out. As we taxied out, the sunset looked pretty nice and I did get a couple of shots with the phone. However, there was a small moon also heading towards the horizon and I figured I should get out the real camera to make a better shot of it. The moon was just about to go down while the red of the sky still remained courtesy of the now-set sun. It was a bit of a dark shot and through the window of the 737 but it turned out pretty well.
I was driving to work one morning recently and as I headed south down the road near home, the moon was quite low in the sky. It was partway through the phases and the angle of the sunlight on its surface provided a lot of texture on the surface. I was driving to work so was not immediately in a position to stop but the drive to work is short so, as soon as I got to the parking lot, I took out the camera. The moon was low above the roof of the office, so I had to move a bit to get an angle on it. The trees were also in the way, so I decided to incorporate them rather than remove them. Then it was into the office.
