Last weekend I came up with a plan to shoot photos of the rising super moon in a scenic spot. It all looked good for sunday, the day before the official full moon. I often shoot the day before to get the moonrise with more ambient light.
After driving for about an hour, 50/50 on paved and dirt I got tho the trailhead and started hiking. After about another hour and quite a bit of elevation gain I got to my spot and it was looking good. I was early so I took some photos while I waited.
Mt. Crested Butte. I live by those distant hills.
IMGP6310-Edit by
Matt Burt, on Flickr
Looking West To Augusta Mountain which my friend and I climbed and skied a few years ago.
IMGP6318-Edit by
Matt Burt, on Flickr
Looking NE toward the Maroon Bells and Aspen
IMGP6357-Edit by
Matt Burt, on Flickr
Finally the moon appears. I've shot the moon in about this much light before so I tried to get it in a single shot. I prefer that if I can to bracketing and HDR which I figured I would need as it climbed higher. But really I should have been bracketing from the start.
IMGP5839-Edit-2 by
Matt Burt, on Flickr
With the super moon not that much bigger but 30% brighter it threw off my sense of what I could do in a single exposure and it was hard to recover any detail from the moon for this shot. Even with HDR and a two stop spread I had trouble getting anything once it got higher.
IMGP5846 by
Matt Burt, on Flickr
Not long after I realized it was getting futile to try and shoot the moon I had a nice hike back in the dark with plenty of moonlight to follow the trail with.
So although my photos didn't come out as nice as I was going for I still had a fun evening doing what I love to do.
I'm not going to make one of those awful composites that have been going around to lots of oohs and aahs. I don't mind some HDR but the blatant (and usually not that well executed) 'shop jobs are just hideous. I'll live with my overexposed moon!
I may try this again for just a regular full moon for easier to balance light. We got snow this week so getting there will probably a lot harder for the next 6 months. I've got time to figure it out.