We recently had an amazing “blue” supermoon rise over the nation’s capital. A “blue moon” is the second full moon to occur in a single calendar month, and a “supermoon” is when a full moon is in a closer orbit around the earth, thus appearing larger in the sky than normal. This supermoon was quite beautiful to watch, but presented a few challenges for any photographers who wanted to capture it rising over the monuments on the National Mall. I created a short video tutorial with some useful tips on how to plan for, capture, and process your images for a beautiful moonrise. I summarized the most important tips in a few slides below. This video is very similar to the one posted for creating fireworks images, but it demonstrates how this technique can be used for a different type of image.
The first part of the video discusses how The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) app can be used to assist in your planning for a moonrise shoot. Here is a screen shot from the desktop version of the TPE app showing (1) my shooting location near the IWO Jima memorial (marked as a red pin), (2) the east-west alignment of the monuments on the National Mall, and (3) a light grey line on the map indicating where the moon will rise on the horizon (think of it as a compass reading) in relationship to the alignment of the monuments. You can also see the timing of the sunset, twilight, and the moonrise in the boxes below the map. In this case sunset was at 7:38 pm, twilight ended at 8:38 pm, and moonrise was at 8:49 pm at an azimuth of 88.5 degrees true north.
Sometimes you can make a great moonrise image in a single shot, if the moon is very near the horizon, and you have good twilight color in the sky. But sometimes this combination isn’t always available to you as a photographer. Maybe the sky is past twilight and very dark (as was the case with this moonrise), or the moon in your composition is higher in the sky and therefore very bright compared to the rest of the scene. In those cases, capturing an image of the overall scene at twilight, and a second image exposed later for the moon, gives you the raw materials for making an outstanding blended image. Below are some tips on capturing “the stuff” you will need for creating a blended moonrise image. I used a 100-500 mm zoom lens for these images, with the focal length set around 250 mm to frame the scene.
Here are some tips on blending an image of the scene taken at twilight with your moonrise shot:
Here are some of my favorite shots of this blue supermoon risng over the National Mall on September 1st, 2023!
The moon makes its first appearance over the right wing of the Capitol and silhouettes of the towers of the Smithsonian Institute. (Original size and position)
Atmospheric haze low in the sky turned the moon a beautiful reddish-orange color. (Original size and position)
Moonrise increased 20% in size for a little more dramatic effect in the image.
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