Behind the Shots: Dancing With the Moon
This man dancing with the moon was a complete stranger to me at the time I captured the photos. The hiker was completely unaware that a photographer in the distance happened to be shooting the moon that night, and he was positioned in the right place at the right time to be included. Single Exposure: 400mm 🔹 F/10🔹1/125sec.🔹 ISO 100
Several months ago while I was out exploring a low-trafficked area without any official trails in Moab, Utah, I spotted some cool rocks and knew that I should be able to get an alignment with the moon at some point. It’s common when I’m out and about to spot potential landmarks that I could incorporate into moon photos, and I note them on a reference map. January rolled around and I hadn’t planned any shots for the full moon which was right at the beginning of the month. It was the day before thea actual full moon, which is one of my favorite days for moon photography due to the timing of the sunset in relation to moonrise, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do. I checked my planning app on this spot though, and sure enough, it looked like things would align well.
A candid shot of the hiker as the sun was about to set. If you look closely, you may notice he’s got some earbud headphones…
I went to the spot, set up my gear, and waited for the moment. With several factors involved, I’m always a bit anxious as the time arrives, because you can never know for sure if calculations for position and timing are accurate until the top of the moon appears above the horizon. When the appointed time came and went without the moon showing up, I was a bit bummed because the setting sun meant the rocks wouldn’t be lit up as I intended, but I continued waiting. Just as the sun was about to set, I noticed a lone hiker enjoying his view near the same rocks I planned to get with the moon, so I snapped the candid photo above. He was unaware of my presence since we were about a quarter mile away each other. While I did consider how cool it would be if he was still there when the moon came up, since that adds a better sense of scale, I figured that most likely he’d head down shortly, especially since the sun was now set. A few minutes later the moon did appear, and I had to reposition myself to properly align it with the rocks, and I started snapping away. I discuss repositioning yourself to get the desired alignment for moon photos more in another behind the shots post. I was surprised that as the moon rose to be closer to where the hiker was, he stayed, and on top of that, much to my delight, he started dancing. I reframed to include him and took several shots, essentially continuous mode, to capture different dance moves.
By the time the moon appeared, the sun had already set. This is one of the early shots, before the moon rose to the level of the hiker. Single Exposure: 500mm 🔹 F/10🔹1/125sec.🔹 ISO 100
After the dancing concluded, the man moved to a different position out of view, I shot a little bit more of the moon, and then headed back to my car. There was only one other car in the little area where I was parked, and being unaware of any other place nearby for parking, I assumed it had to be his. I started writing out a note to leave my contact info on his windshield and let him know I had captured his awesome dance and would be happy to send the photos, however he surprised me with his speed getting back and I saw him approaching. “Those were some impressive dance moves up there!”, I started with. We chatted for a while and I gave him my info so we could be in touch.
I was able to “balance” the moon as it continued to rise closer to the hiker’s position. Single Exposure: 550mm 🔹 F/11🔹1/80 sec.🔹 ISO 125
I excitedly drove home, anxious to look at the photos on my computer screen. As I went through them, I realized that I had taken enough of the dancing in succession to turn it into a little video. I wasn’t really familiar with creating an animation, so I looked it up and found it to be a fairly easy process in Photoshop. After opening all the images as layers, there’s a timeline panel allowing you to select options for the animation and then exporting as a gif or video format. You can see the steps more in depth on Adobe’s website here.
Observers may notice that everything is silhouetted in the animation, while in the photo there is some light any you can make out the rocky landscape. For the photos, I chose to increase the shadows, but I brought them down for the silhouette effect for the animation. It was pretty wild to me that he was at the right spot at the right time, especially considering there are no trails in the area, so it’s a fairly rarely visited spot. I also wondered if anybody had photos of me dancing out in nature the times when I thought I was unseen. Either way, dancing out in nature like nobody’s watching is always a good activity, even if someone is!
