Early rising at 3.30am to capture full moon photos
This first image is my chosen one for today. Below I’ll tell you the story behind it and for this post I’m going to include all my camera settings.
Full moon over the river Thames and Greenland Pier, London 1/5sec f5 300mm ISO100
This is a tale of being flexible! I had planned for around two months to take photos of the blood moon on May 26th. I had been using the Photopills app to work out where a good spot might be and had it all in my diary. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a cloudy day and although I did manage to see the moon briefly as it set in the morning it was always partially covered in cloud (and not very attractively!). The shot below was the best I could do on the 26th. This is the fishing alternative of the one that got away. It would have been amazing if only I’d got a clear shot of the whole moon. The colour was stunning!
Blood moon setting over the rooftops in south east London 1/20sec f5.6 300mm ISO100
That evening I watched and watched but the cloud was just far too thick.
So, I went to bed determined to try again, even though technically the date of the super moon would now be past, I really would like to capture stunning photos of the moon in the future, so even the practice would be great for me. I set the alarm for 4am. In the event, I woke up even before the alarm rang and quickly got myself and all my gear ready. I took two tripods and two cameras because I wanted to take a time lapse video as well.
The moon was so bright that I found it tricky to get the exposure right for both the scene and the moon. A lot of my shots had an overexposed moon which was just a shining white orb with no detail or colour in it. However the scene and reflections in this shot below were spot on. So, I chose this photo to edit with a properly exposed moon. The first image below shows the overexposed moon straight out of the camera, the second where I’ve replaced it with a better exposed moon and the third where I took artistic licence and enlarged the moon to make it look more attractive and more as my eye saw it at the time.
Click on any of these images to see the full sized shot. You can then click on either side to see the 3 images as a slideshow. The only thing that’s different in each one is the moon.
At that time of the morning I had expected to feel a bit cold and tired but it turned out that I really enjoyed it. The only sounds were of the birds chirping their pre-dawn chorus, the water flowing in the river and a distant hum of some traffic. It felt wonderful to experience it!
Below are two shots which came straight out of camera where the moon looked amazing but the scene didn’t have the look I wanted.
The full moon over south east London and Greenland Pier 1/15sec f5 80mm ISO100
The full moon over the Surrey Quays area in south east London 1/8sec f5 150mm ISO100
I also took a few shots of the moon on its own and I think they’re the best I’ve got to date. My lens has a maximum focal length of 300mm so this is what you can do with that. I’ve cropped in a lot to get this and for me, I’m happy to see the moon features that I can on this shot.
The full moon on 27 May 2021 (day after the blood super moon) taken in London 1/5sec f16 300mm ISO100 cropped
All in all it was really enjoyable and this is something I’ll be doing a lot more of in the future. My end goal will be to capture great shots of the full or crescent moon in London scenes and with iconic buildings.
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Some nice warm weather is forecast for London after a very dull and cloudy May so far. I hope you’ve got some good weather heading your way too!
Loren x