The other night, a near-full Moon actually decided to show itself after weeks of typical Cascadian cloud cover this time of the year. So I took advantage and shot several dozen images in hopes of making my very first real timelapse out of separate photos (as opposed to filming one on my phone).
Now, to find that elusive and unicorn-like 'free time'...
The past few weeks have been filled with fog, which is great as an indication of timely snowfall, but not so much if you want to photograph the Moon. Since December's full Moon has been obscured by such snow-filled clouds, I bring you a fairy-tale-like Moon from earlier in the month.
Some people obsess with taking bathroom-mirror selfies. I obsess with taking smartphone street light shots at sundown!
On the way toward 4 o'clock sunsets, seemingly endless precipitation, but lacking snow, November is the most miserable month of the year.
At least if you live in the North. It's a pretty decent month in warmer climates in our hemisphere, as my own travel experience could attest.
But I live in the North.
Indeed, I didn't quite grasp the full extent of its dreariness until I moved from the Everlit Electric City to a small town, in which only a handful of central streets is adequately lit after sunset.
I don't quite live on one of such streets.
Most people here don't.
And so I am doomed to dampness, darkness, and deer rustling outside the window—stars or the Moon often obscured by heavy, though unseen cloud cover—reluctantly increasing my caffeine intake to fight the urge to hibernate and dreaming of another time.
Being an admirer of All Things Moon, I, of course, knew that this weekend was going to involve one of the most stunning (and ominous!) sights known to man, that is, a total lunar eclipse. I also knew that the conditions were going to be good: mild weather, few clouds. This made this event rather different from its precursor that I photographed last October.
Unfortunately, I did not have the time to locate an aesthetically pleasing vantage point to record the Moon rise, which in my part of the North American continent coincided with a partial eclipse. This made the Moon resemble its own crescent, though much brighter and seemingly larger than one would look.
The proverbial lemonade out of lemons ended up looking like this:
For the past week, sunsets in much of the Rockies along the U.S. / Canada border have been spectacular, but not for a good reason. Particles from several dozen forest fires in this region have colorized the sky into unnaturally beautiful shades and made the air quality rather unhealthy.
And yet, I kept missing my opportunities to capture and document the otherwordly Sun setting behind the smoke-filled horizon, meager selfies notwithstanding.
Until now.
This photograph will go nicely with similarly composed moonrise images I shot last year.
It's been a while since I've had the chance to photograph the Moon, though opportunities certainly present themselves in the summer, when the skies are clear. Tonight, I did not have my camera once again, but I couldn't not photograph a scene like this.
Out came my smartphone, and I snapped a few images that appeared decent on screen. Upon closer inspection, the grain in the images exceeded that of what my Pentax DSLR would give on an automatic setting and without a tripod. This means that my smartphone defaults to a very high ISO when shooting under low-light conditions like those of a sunset.
Lesson learned!