February Full Moon

Over the past couple of years, I've finally been able to capture some decent moon photos. A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a free online moon photography class put on by Paul deBerjeois. Paul scheduled the class so that his students could have some time to practice and be ready for the full moon. Unfortunately, we've had a lot of clouds, so practice opportunities didn't happen.

I thought the same thing would happen this night (Wednesday, February 8), so I didn't make any plans to be in a good spot for shooting the moon.

Silly me.

Sometime after 6:00, I realized that there weren't that many clouds and I probably could get some moon shots. We live in a neighborhood with a lot of very big trees and all the eastern horizon views for me contain houses. So my dear supportive husband drove me to a place where we thought I could get some good photos. We stood out in a very cold, breezy field for awhile and waited. And waited. And waited some more. I began to think that maybe a building was blocking our view. Plus the parking lights had just come on and I didn't want them to disrupt my pictures.

We went across the street, up on a higher hill, and stood out in the cold some more. And more. And more. We couldn't figure out why the moon wasn't showing up - it was well past moonrise time. John walked higher up the hill and looked around to see if we were just missing it. Sigh. So we hopped in the truck, drove across another street and used the restroom at Arby's. Just as we walked out the door, there it was! The moon was out and well up in the sky.

So we pulled off into a field just up from Arby's and I finally managed to get some photos.





The cold waiting wasn't entirely fruitless. I pulled off some nice light trails.