Once in a Blue Moon over Tower Bridge

Star log August 30 2023 - the Blue Moon might shine tonight - subject to levels of cloud cover over London.

According to the “Calendar” definition ( 2 full moons in 1 month) we won’t see another blue moon until December 2028 - so pretty rare! However, according to the “Seasonal” calculation (4 full moons in one season) there’ll be another one along in August 2024. (source Wikipedia) Still, that’s only once per year!

Anyway, it was special enough to get me excited to capture it even though the forecast was cloudy. And it did turn out to be a really special night in quite a few ways.

I was in place by around 8.30 for the first shot. I must admit that at this point it did not look promising because the cloud cover was pretty thick.

I thought I might as well get the settings in place for the big event so I took a few shots of Tower Bridge in all its lit up glory, while doing some wishful thinking. This next shot was a long exposure with light trails from a boat doing a sharp U turn from Tower Bridge Pier to head under the bridge.

After a while the cloud started to thin in a few places and the light started to break through beautifully and dramatically.

And then, the moon started to appear above the cloud. What an amazing sight! Around this time, in the normally deserted spot I was standing, more and more dancers started to appear. At first there were little groups doing Tik Tok routines but almost without me realising, because I was concentrating on the camera and the sky, the vibe changed and a whole crowd of people were dancing salsa. It was absolutely lovely! The setting was beautiful, under the light of the Shard with the moon rising over the river and with beautiful music as a background.

This is the slightly sad part. I was going to include a video of all of this as part of this blog but after I had got it ready and transferred from my phone, I realised that I can’t post it because the music was recorded and it would be a copyright breach if I tried. I might try to pair it with some similar legally bought online music but that’ll take me a little bit longer to find the right match. Watch this space!

Hopefully I’ve set the scene with the sultry Latin music, the beautiful dancers, the lights twinkling from the buildings over the river and the moon continuing to challenge the clouds.

Until finally, it rises clear and I have a chance to capture it in all its magnificent glory. And I get to experience the same feelings of awe and wonder that people have always felt through time when they see a dramatic moonrise. I’m sure the sight of it sparks or resets some deep held appreciation of beauty, nature and a desire to lift humankind up from our day to day survival existence.

This next shot is a composite of an image I exposed for the bridge blended with one exposed for the moon taken a few seconds earlier. I’ve also enlarged the moon ever so slightly to make it more as the eye would see it. This is really to compensate for the fact that I could have ideally used a bigger lens. This is one time when gear really does make a difference. Most of the spectacular photos you see of the supermoon when it’s filling the image are taken with long lenses. Mine is quite long at 300mm but it’s not quite enough to give that beautiful compression effect when you see a building with the moon seeming to form a huge halo behind it.

Still, most of the time I don’t need a super long lens so one thing I could do after a bit more practice is to hire one for a future supermoon. I definitely wouldn’t want to see thick cloud cover after doing that though.

All of this got me thinking back to previous supermoons. Here are 3 of my favourites.

This next one featured the Walkie Talkie and was taken in March 2020 as the moon was setting at dawn. In this one I absolutely love the sunrise colours reflected in the glass of the Walkie Talkie as well as the red sun flaring on the windows of the Minster Building below that. This was one completely as it was taken in camera.

The next one is from May 2021 and is taken over the Thames with Surrey Quays and Greenland Pier in the frame. The golden reflections on the water are my favourite part of this one. This one is a composite of one shot to bring out the golden colour of the moon and one shot to capture the correctly exposed lights of the buildings. Again I enlarged the moon just slightly to give more of a feel of how I saw the scene.

And lastly in this batch is the Wolf Moon rising over the buildings of Canary Wharf in January 2022. This one makes my top 3 today because of the contrast of the natural beauty of the moon against the structured shapes and colour of the windows. This one is as it was shot in the camera with just a touch of saturation to bring out the colour in the windows to give it my style.

I hope you enjoyed this summary of my blue moon evening and my previous supermoon captures. If you’d like any prints, just message me and I can give you sizes and prices. If you’re a photographer, my top tips would be to take as long a lens as you can and use an app such as Photo Pills to let you know where the moon will rise and set in relation to the locations you’d like to capture.

The next full moon is on 29th September 2023. Let’s hope the weather will be clear.

Loren x