Super Blue Moon

I got the idea for this pho­to last week, after my neigh­bor mowed and baled his hay field on the hill above our house. The moon was going to look like a full moon both Wednesday and Thursday nights so there would be two chances to have a clear sky and try to make the pho­to. Other con­di­tions were favor­able too; the moon was going to rise only a lit­tle more than an hour after sun­set, and the evening tem­per­a­ture was pleas­ant so the rel­a­tive­ly short wait for the moon to rise would be comfortable.

Wednesday evening’s weath­er fore­cast was for heavy cloud cov­er at moon rise and it was accu­rate. That left Thursday night.

I was excit­ed about this full moon, it was a blue moon because it was the sec­ond full moon of the month, and it was a super­moon because it would be near its clos­est point to Earth in its orbit at the same time as it is full. The next super blue moon will not occur until 2037.

After using a lit­tle bug repel­lent — which I hoped would keep the mos­qui­toes, ticks, and chig­gers at bay — I made my way up the hill before sun­set. I had­n’t picked out a loca­tion in advance at which to set up my tri­pod and cam­era but I had time to use the PhotoPills app to deter­mine where on the hori­zon the moon would rise. After sev­er­al min­utes of try­ing out dif­fer­ent loca­tions, I found an arrange­ment of hay bales that I liked and that would frame the moon­rise. I set up and took the fore­ground pho­to dur­ing the blue hour, which was real­ly only 10 min­utes long last night. Then I wait­ed, know­ing it would be anoth­er 45 min­utes before moonrise.

It was qui­et on that hill­top. There was no wind, and no mos­qui­toes both­ered me. As soon as the moon began to peek above the hori­zon, as if on cue, coy­otes in the creek drainage by our house start­ed to howl, and then coy­otes on the oth­er side of the hill joined in. I was in the mid­dle of a coy­ote con­ver­sa­tion and it was lovely.

Leaving my tri­pod and cam­era exact­ly where it was for the fore­ground pho­to, I used a longer lens to iso­late and take a pho­to of the moon. After arriv­ing back at the house, I blend­ed the two pho­tos togeth­er in my pho­to pro­cess­ing soft­ware, with the moon at its nat­ur­al posi­tion above the hori­zon, which gave the moon an exag­ger­at­ed size rel­a­tive to the landscape. 

After all, this was a “super” blue moon and it deserved some prominence.