burnt embers

As many of you will know, it was the so called ‘supermoon’ last night which is an astrologer’s made-up name for what astronomers refer to the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system (ref, but see also this link which is a very nice clear explanation of how it works, with great visuals) which is when the moon is at it’s closest to earth. In this case, yesterday was the closest that the moon and earth will pass in 2013, resulting in a larger appearing moon. I consulted the twilight calculator (a very handy tool for photographers) for the time of moon rise and degrees away. I decided I could shoot the moon rising behind Trial Island. My plan was to go to Clover Point with a compass, find the perfect spot so the moon could be seen coming up behind the lighthouse on Trial Island. But, I thought I should do a trial run the night before, and the angle for that was about right for Harling Point to line up with the light house. And thus, on Saturday evening I took a test series. I did not use a compass, as it was a test after all, and there was some low cloud to the east which as it turned out knocked out the first 20 minutes of the moon rise. Without a compass I missed the exact spot the moon appeared, but with the cloud it was evident where the moon was really rising and I could reset the tripod and catch most of it, and learn for the next day.

When Sunday rolled around, so did the clouds and sadly no moon was visible last night. Thus what you get is Saturday’s experiment, a nearly full moon, not quite at perigee and 20 minutes after actual moon rise so my title is only true in that I took a time-lapse sequence. As it turns out, I think Saturday was the best day to shoot as it moonrise coincided with sunset in a way that was very good for photography, as you can see in the video below. There was also a spectacular sky in the west with sunset, that I could not photograph as I only have one camera, but after this series, I took a few shots of the last of the sunset as well, which will be shown on a future blog.

The image above is taken after the video below and is an HDR compilation of 3 brackets and one edited image. To view the video click on the image below – I recommend that you then click on the Youtube logo on the video and view it at full resolution as videos tend to run poorly directly out of WordPress. (more…)