Planning Ahead

There are Some photo opportunities that "arise" infrequently. One of those is a full moon rising. Here, you have a 27 day cycle of opportunity. Of course the weather has to cooperate as well. I have had this shot in my mind for quite some time. I visit this area once per year, and last year, the trip did not coincide with a full moon.

Knowing that this year I would have the opportunity to shoot the moonrise, I did a little research. Technically, the best day to shoot the moonrise is the day before a full moon. The moon looks full, yet there is still some daylight as the moon rises. The internet is a wonderful resource, as I was able to find that the moonrise would be at 8:12 at an azimuth of 125 degrees.

I've always pictured this shot in my mind to contain boats, so prior to having dinner in town, I scoped out the area to find a good place to set up the shot. At 8:00, I made my way to the beach to wait for the moon to appear. At 8:12, I began to search the horizon, and a very faint glow was peeking through the haze. From that point, I could walk up and down the beach to find the different opportunities for shots.

Starting out, there was plenty of daylight left to set the camera to Aperature Priority ("Av on Canon, "A" on Nikon Cameras). I set the aperature to f/2.8 which is wide open. At an ISO of 200, the camera set the shutter speed to 1/320 sec. A good rule of thumb for handholding a camera is to set the minimum shutter speed to the reciprocal of the focal length. In this case, I was shooting with my 70-200mm zoomed out to 200mm. As a result, I need to keep an eye on the shutter speed to be sure it does not fall below 1/200 sec. After about 5 minutes, the sky was darkening enough to lower the shutter speed to that threshold.

I set the camera to Shutter Priority ("Tv" on Canon, "S" on Nikon Cameras). I set the shutter speed to 1/200 sec. As the time grew later, the sky was obviously getting darker. As the camera set the lens' aperature to its maximum opening of f/2.8, the photos were beginning to become underexposed. My only choice in this case was to bump the ISO up to 400. If you remember the discussions on tradeoffs, you will recall that the tradeoff of ISO is noise. I was able to shoot until just after 8:30 before I decided to change positions.

Another shot I had in mind was to pair the lighted Pilgrim Monument with the full moon. Again, I planned ahead and scouted the cemetery with my GPS to find where I would need to position myself to find the moon at 125 degrees along with the tower. It just so happened that I could get this vantage point from the small church at the top of the hill. This is a shot I had hoped for, but wasn't sure could work.