Scintillatingly Special Sturgeon Supermoon

Our bedroom faces west, or more or less anyway, and with Thursday night being clear, the Sturgeon supermoon, was shining upon us quite brightly. After I trundled to the commode sometime before 4:30, the lunar lure would not allow me to return to slumberland. I did try to fight it for awhile, but the mighty sturgeon won.

I took my time once I got up because in my head I thought that I might be able to photograph it with a reflection when the big fish descended a bit lower on the horizon. Nevertheless, I was out in the car, not too long after 5, heading toward Riverside Park.

However, on my way to the park, I decided to stop on Lake Avenue as I neared downtown because I thought the moon over the street with streetlights below would make an interesting photo. I set up the tripod, waited for a vehicle to enter the frame, and pressed the shutter.

That  ↑ photo, and in fact all of them are composites. The moon is really very bright and will easily become just a pure white circle in the sky if I expose for the ambient light. So, I take an exposure to capture the moon, but that renders the rest of the scene black. I then take a somewhat brighter exposure for the scene: not too bright, of course, because I do want the viewer to see a little bit of detail in the scene.

I did the same thing for the next images once I got to the park, but I went a little further in this ↓ first photo: one exposure for the general scene, one for the moon, and a third for the reflection. The two moon shots are more zoomed in to make the moon larger than it would have been in the capture of the whole scene. In the final image, the moon and reflection seem to be as I experienced them in person, but they had become very small in the camera when I exposed for the big scene.

The light in the centre background is from the highway on the edge of town.

The next photo is a closer view, but the technique is the same – one exposure for the scene and one for the moon.

Finally, I switched to my telephoto lens to capture the moon as large as I could. I kept just a little bit of the trees in the lower part of the frame to add a little bit of contest, but the those treetops are barely visible at this resolution. I really should have stayed until the moon was closer to the treetops.

I hadn't  planned on this photoshoot, but it was good to get out, for I have been neglecting my photography lately.