Hunter's Moon
coldclimb
Registered Users Posts: 1,169 Major grins
Eyeballing the moon each evening last cycle, I figured I had a fairly accurate guess of where it would be rising on the day it was full, so my wife and I headed out onto the local hay flats as the sun went down and set up with a good view of the mountains. This area used to be hayfields until the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, when basically the entire valley moved around and the water table was suddenly above ground level. Since then, there's thousands of acres of flat treeless terrain, which moose, birds, hunters, and photographers all like a lot.
I hadn't been to this area during the summer, so I underestimated the swampiness of the ground (Duh! If nothing grows, there must be standing water, right?) so I wound up at exactly the right place and the right time, but in the wrong footwear. Tracy wore rubber boots. :rofl I spent a minute or two pondering this, and at length decided that I wasn't likely to DIE by being very very cold below the knees, so we waded our way out onto the flatland, crunching ice chunks off the frozen surface of the foot-deep swampwater as we went. After the first five minutes of groaning agony, the numbness set in and I was relatively okay for the rest of the shoot.
We hurriedly set up for some shots in the waning sunset light, but our slow slogging made us miss our spotlight by something like 20 feet as a hill shadow passed us by! Photoshop to the rescue...
That mountain in the background there is Pioneer Peak. It's our biggest local landmark, and it's exactly where I calculated our Hunter's Moon would be rising. My guess put it just over the left shoulder from here, making composing photos stupidly easy, so even I could get it right.
Boy was I wrong, for the second time this evening. :rofl Instead, the moon rose something like 45 degrees away, directly East. Evidently I've never learned much Astronomy.
Saving the evening for us, however, our other local landmark was exactly in the way: Matanuska Peak!
So we snapped away for the duration of the sunset/moonrise, which lasted something like 30 or 45 minutes.
I'm thrilled with the results, and after running a bit of warm water on my feet for a while I'm fully recovered from the shoot, so don't worry! Now I'm just a touch more motivated to get my hands on some good glass, since the softness of these photos kills me just a little bit. Hope you've thoroughly enjoyed seeing them and sharing in the experience!
I hadn't been to this area during the summer, so I underestimated the swampiness of the ground (Duh! If nothing grows, there must be standing water, right?) so I wound up at exactly the right place and the right time, but in the wrong footwear. Tracy wore rubber boots. :rofl I spent a minute or two pondering this, and at length decided that I wasn't likely to DIE by being very very cold below the knees, so we waded our way out onto the flatland, crunching ice chunks off the frozen surface of the foot-deep swampwater as we went. After the first five minutes of groaning agony, the numbness set in and I was relatively okay for the rest of the shoot.
We hurriedly set up for some shots in the waning sunset light, but our slow slogging made us miss our spotlight by something like 20 feet as a hill shadow passed us by! Photoshop to the rescue...
That mountain in the background there is Pioneer Peak. It's our biggest local landmark, and it's exactly where I calculated our Hunter's Moon would be rising. My guess put it just over the left shoulder from here, making composing photos stupidly easy, so even I could get it right.
Boy was I wrong, for the second time this evening. :rofl Instead, the moon rose something like 45 degrees away, directly East. Evidently I've never learned much Astronomy.
Saving the evening for us, however, our other local landmark was exactly in the way: Matanuska Peak!
So we snapped away for the duration of the sunset/moonrise, which lasted something like 30 or 45 minutes.
I'm thrilled with the results, and after running a bit of warm water on my feet for a while I'm fully recovered from the shoot, so don't worry!
Now I'm just a touch more motivated to get my hands on some good glass, since the softness of these photos kills me just a little bit. Hope you've thoroughly enjoyed seeing them and sharing in the experience!
John Borland
www.morffed.com
www.morffed.com
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