Behind the Shots: Moon Gazing
“Hey, stranger on the internet! Do you want to go climb up some rocks next week and I’ll take a picture of you in front of the moon?”. That’s essentially how things started, before leading to the photos you see here.
Spoiler Alert - it all worked out as planned in the end! Single Exposure: 🔹600mm 🔹 F/8 🔹1/250 sec. 🔹 ISO 100
I’m always on the lookout for interesting features that I might be able to photograph along with the moon rising or setting. That means if I’m hiking, I’m looking up high for rock formations, trees, cactus, or even man made structures. It’s the ridgelines which run North and South specifically where potential moon alignments are found. On my old stomping grounds at South Mountain in Phoenix, AZ, I was always scanning the horizon for anything that could provide a companion to the moon. One day on a hike in early 2020, I noticed some rocks which seemed to be in a good position for an alignment. How awesome would it be to have the moon rising with someone standing there at the top!? I used the photo planning app, The Photographer’s Ephemeris, to find out if I could make this work out for the next full moon, and if so, what position I would need to be at on the ground and exactly when. Sure enough, it looked like I should be able to bring the plan to fruition!
This was a mockup for previsualization of the shot I would be going for. I took a photo of the site with clear skies, and pasted in a moon and person at the estimated scale.
Even then, there was something else to figure out. I had to determine if the rocks could be climbed without any equipment. I mapped out an approach for an attempt, and a few days later made my way up to the spot. Fortunately, the worst of getting up there was hoisting myself up in a couple places. Admittedly though, it was a bit scary at the top for me. At first, I figured I’d have my nephew go up for the photos, but after being up there myself I had second thoughts. He had just barely graduated from high school, and my sister might be just a little upset if I put him in a potentially dangerous situation with so much of his life still in front of him. Instead, I opted to find a stranger on the internet. Enter Jason. I had followed him on Instagram for a good while and always enjoyed his photos, and could tell he didn’t mind climbing up to high places. I messaged him with the idea, and he agreed. I had taken a photo of the spot when I visited before, so I created a mockup image, simply inserting a moon from a different photo, and a man cut out from an image I found on the interwebs. Visualization is good for achieving goals, right? I wanted to give Jason an idea of what we were going for, and to make sure he was as excited for it as I was, if he wasn’t already.
Once in position and waiting for the moonrise, clouds dominated the sky. We thought for sure our plans would be ruined.
So, how did I know how big the moon would appear compared to the rocks to be able to create the mockup? Had I planned farther in advance, I could have watched another moonrise from the same position, but I didn’t have that luxury. A great tidbit to know for shooting the moon with a friend (or stranger), is that at a distance of half a mile, a 6-foot person will be approximately 1\4th the “height” of the moon. For this shot, I’d be a little more than half a mile away, so I estimated based on that. For more on the apparent moon size in photos, check out my post on “The Secret to Big Moon Photos”.
With less than 20 minutes to go before the moon photos, the clouds began to clear out.
A week after I had messaged Jason, we met in person for the first time at the trailhead parking lot at the appointed time, and I gave some last minute pointers on getting up to the spot. I handed him a walkie talkie, since cell reception is always spotty on South Mountain, and it’s always good to be able to communicate with each other for coordination. It was pretty cloudy, and once he got into position, I snapped some photos. We were both thinking that most likely the clouds would ruin our plans, but at the same time I was hoping they would only partially clear out, leaving some for dramatic effect, as long as they didn’t obscure the moon when it was right behind Jason. If only nature cooperated with our will! The clouds persisted for the next 20 minutes, but with less than 5 minutes before the moon would peek over the mountain, they had cleared out of that part of the sky completely. Phew!
About 5 minutes before the moon appeared, the clouds completely cleared, making way for clear shots. Single Exposure: 🔹600mm 🔹 F/8 🔹1/250 sec. 🔹 ISO 100
I had told Jason that we’d go for a simple pose, just standing and gazing at the moon. It was a bit breezy, but fortunately he was able to hold his position without getting blown away. The disc of the moon moves across the sky at about its own diameter every 2 minutes, which is a handy thing to know when photographing it. That essentially means that wherever you see the top of the moon, the bottom of it will reach that same height in about 2 minutes, giving you a little bit of time to reposition if necessary. When the moon had cleared I let him know we were done, but he said “Should I do some jumps?”. “Sure, why not?” I responded. He did a few leaps and I shot in continuous mode to be able to get several shots with each jump. “Alright, the photoshoot is over!”, I said into my walkie talkie, and he responded, “The photoshoot is what? Over”. And if you got that joke without having to re-read it right now, I award you 4,500 bonus points. If you have any questions on this series of photos, or suggestions for future elaborations, let me know in the comments!
After the moon had passed behind, he asked “Should I do some jumps?”. Sure why not! Single Exposure: 🔹600mm 🔹 F/8 🔹1/200 sec. 🔹 ISO 100
