Fly me to the moon

Hello all and welcome to this weeks blog. I paid a return visit last night to my old friend Lonely Joe. Joe is a young (80 years est) oak tree who resides in a farmers field near my home. Last year he was the subject of a year long project by me, photographing him throughout the seasons, sunrises, sunsets and even with the Milky way rising behind him and meteors streaking across the night sky. The one thing I didnt get though was a moonrise. During a conversation with Dave yesterday he informed me that the moon was rising directly behind the oak and although i had missed the full moon the night before it was still going to be a 98% full one so decided to head over at 11.30pm and set up ready for some action.

Moon just below the horizon

Upon arrival I realised my usual spot to get my compositions of Joe, the lane adjacent to the field, was overgrown and the tops of the grasses were obscuring the view. I would come back later to this spot as the moon backlit those grasses nicely but for now I needed a clean image of just Joe and the Moon. My thoughts were erring towards getting the moon just below one of Joes branches, making it look like some glowing orb of fruit, hanging from the tree. I would need a couple of exposures as I wanted to capture some detail of the moons surface and not have it blown out making it look like a giant star. All this would mean I would have to negotiate my nemesis though……a style! I have very dodgy knees and my left leg in particular just will not bend as much as it used to, making the traverse of styles sometimes hilarious to watch and very often frustrating. The field that Joe lives in has a footpath through it but clearly is rarely used as the style was prett much covered in brambles and the embrace of a hazel tree. This made things very prickly and I had to engage my Swiss army knife to prune some of the gonad catching spiky branches out of the way. After about five minutes of Percy Throwering, gruntin, cursing and knee cracking I was over and in the field. The farmer has recently palnted a crop of something in it so I respectfully hugged the hedgeline and worked my wazy round to where I thought the moon would be best positioned to get my shot once it had risen. I don’t have the Photopills app but do use Stellarium which gave me a rough idea of the position of the moon. The way Joe is positioned on the hill and the fact I was down slope meant that I didn’t actually see the glowing orb of our nearest celestial neighbour until 40 minutes after it had risen. I was constanlty making minor position changes as the light behind Joe increased until i eventually witnessed the moon begin to peak over the top of the hill.

Due to dust in the atmosphere the light from the moon was orange.

Now the work began. I hustled along the edge of the field, making sure i was always in the right location to get the moon appearing as if it was dangling from the tree and grabbing two different exposures each time. As it was still low in the sky it appeared very orange as the light was filtering through some upper atmosphere dust, probably being blown up from the Sahara. I found out later that there was also some Noctilucent clouds about, beautiful strand like clouds that reside in the upper reaches of the atmsophere which get lit up by the long set sun. However I didnt catch any on this occasion.

My favourite from the session.

Once I was happy with the images of the moon under the tree I switched to a more wide field view of the scene. it was here I headed back to the lane, negotiated the “Krypton Factor” style and set up the camera low to catch the backlighting of the grasses by the moonlight. It was a fun little session and I drove home through the beginnings of the fog I would miss and crawled into bed, kicking one of the cats out of my spot and drifted off to sleep, excited about the editing the following day.

Love the grasses being backlit by the moonlight in this one.

As I write this I am in a local cafe having breakfast. I havn’t edited the images yet but will insert them in here once I have done so. I hope you like them as much as I hope I do!

In other news I am photographing a friends wedding in a couple of weeks. I have not partaken in wedding photography for quite a few years now, finding it incredibly stressful and not enjoyable in the slightest butas it was my friend I couldnt refuse really. They are quite laid back about what to expect (I’m no expert in this genre but I can produce great images occasionally!) and I am looking forward to giving them some memories they can look back on over the long years of their marriage.

Thats it for this week folks. Thanks for reading as always, your continued support does mean a lot!