We had a fantastic rise of the Snow full moon in February. When the full moon rises in the east behind the National Mall, it is always of interest to DC-area photographers, but some full moon dates are better than others. How can you determine if things will line up for a great shot? A great tool for planning moon rise images is Photopills, which you can easily install on your phone and/or tablet. Below is a screenshot from my IPAD for my plan to photograph the moonrise on February 25.
Planning for the Shot Using Photopills:
In the “planner” mode, you can look up and mark your shooting location on the map. In this case, it was the Netherlands Carillon Bell Tower, as shown by the “red pin”. For the date you select, it will show the azimuth of the moonrise direction as a blue line, and as you advance the time bar at the bottom (shown here for 7:16 pm) by sliding your finger across it, a second blue line will move across the map and will show the azimuth of the moon for the selected time. The panels on the right provide more of the information you will need.
The fourth and fifth panels provides the time of sunset, the time and azimuth of the moonrise location, and the timing of the blue hour during civil and nautical twilight. Ideally, you want the moon to rise after sunset during the golden or blue hour portion of civil twilight. On this night, the sun set at 5:56 pm, and civil twilight ended at 6:23 pm. The moon rose at 7:10 pm at an azimuth of 84.1 degrees on the horizon. This azimuth puts the moonrise in a great alignment with the monuments for this shooting location. As you can see on the map, the moon will rise just to the left of Lincoln Memorial. The second thing to note is that the moon will rise well after civil twilight and the sky will be very dark, without any twilight color in the sky. This timing issue can be overcome by shooting the scene during the blue hour portion of civil twilight, and capturing the moon later, which can be blended into a composite image.
But can you tell how the moon will appear in the sky in relationship to the landmarks below? As you advance the time bar, you can see the movement of the moon and how it relates to the position of the landmarks. The third panel gives the azimuth and elevation of the moon in the sky for any selected point on the time bar. You can also select the black pin icon in the second panel, and drop a “black pin” at the location of a landmark.
When using the black pin, the second panel gives you the distance, altitude difference, and azimuth between your shooting location and the landmark. If you advance the moon line using the time bar to coincide with the black pin, the second panel will also provide the height of the moon over the ground at the site of the black pin. In this screenshot, I have placed the black pin at the left edge of Lincoln memorial, and aligned the moon with the black pin. From the third panel, I can see that the moon is at an azimuth of 85.2 degrees and almost one degree of elevation over the horizon. From the second panel, I can also see that the center of the moon will be 142 feet over the ground, and will appear as 47 feet across in relationship to things on the ground. I have also adjusted (in Map Settings) the width appearance of the moon line’s to be proportional to the size of the landmarks on the ground. By doing an online search, I was able to obtain that the height of the Lincoln Memorial is approximately 99 feet tall. By comparing the heights of the moon in Photopills with the published height of the memorial, I can tell that the moon will clear the left edge of the Memorial as it rises. Here is an eventual photo that captured this relationship.
Another aspect of the moon rising at this particular azimuth is that it will also just clear the top of the Washington Monument as it makes its way across the sky. You can see this by placing the black pin at the base of the Washington Monument, and aligning the moon line with the black pin/monument on the map. The second panel shows that the moon will be over the top of the Washington Monument at 7:30 pm, at an azimuth of 87.4 degrees, 3.37 degrees in elevation in the sky, 607 feet high over the ground, and will appear to be 83 feet across. According to the internet, the Washington Monument is 555 feet high, so the moon is clearing the monument by approximately 10 feet. You can also see that the moon will appear wider than the base of the monument itself by looking at the width of the moon line.
Here is a vertically cropped image (without the blue hour sky blended in) showing the relationship of the moon as it passed over the Washington Monument.
Capturing the Blue Hour Scene and the Moonrise Progression:
Even though the moon was rising after twilight, we arrived early and set up to capture the scene with the pleasing color and light of the blue hour. You can check your alignment once you get to your shooting location using the “Augmented Reality” tool in Photopills which uses your phone’s camera to display the moon rise location over the scene.
All the images of the blue hour scene and the subsequent moon rise series were taken with a 100-500 mm lens set to 238 mm. I auto-focused on the Washington Monument, took the image with a cable release remote using the following settings: f16, ISO 200, and 8 seconds. When framing up your blue hour scene, it is important to know where the moon will be rising, and make sure you leave enough space on that side of the image for the moonrise and still have balance across your composition. Here is the blue hour shot:
Here is the blue hour shot blended with the image of the moon appearing on the horizon.
After you get your blue hour shot, you will need to adjust your camera settings to capture the moon. In general, you will want to lower your f-stop to let more light in, and increase your ISO so that you can increase your shutter speed to keep the moon in sharp focus. My moon settings started at f 7.1, ISO 2000, and 1/30 sec. Your focus should be set at infinity, which you can do initially by auto-focusing on the Capitol Building. You should then switch to manual focus and adjust it manually for the moon once it is visible. I recommend you slightly underexpose the moon, (maybe by 2/3 of a stop) to ensure you don’t overexpose the moon and lose detail. This will make the rest of your overall scene pretty dark, but that is OK because you will be blending only the moon from each moonrise image into your blue hour scene, which was taken earlier with the same framing and composition. Once the moon appears over the horizon, I suggest shooting at short intervals to start, and then a minute or so apart when it is over the middle of the Lincoln Memorial, until it has cleared the top of the Washington Monument and beyond. This shooting sequence will give you lots of options for final images, and also provide enough material for putting together a composite image of the moon’s progression across the sky. Since the moon is getting brighter as it rises in the sky, you also will need to adjust your camera settings to ensure you do not overexpose the moon as it continues to rise. As the moon rose, my shutter speed gradually increased to 1/320 sec at ISO 1600.
Processing and Assembling the Final Composite Images:
The final steps are to process your individual captures, and then assemble your final blended images. I always start by processing the blue hour scene. I next process each moon image, ensuring the moon looks sharp, is detailed with good contrast, and closely matches the color and exposure I saw in the sky. Once you have made these adjustments in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw (or other raw editor), open the images up in Photoshop. Make your blue hour scene the background layer, and then stack your moon rise image as a layer on top of your blue hour scene. Once the images are stacked, you should auto-align the blue hour scene and the moon rise image. Once aligned, you can set the blend mode for the moon layer to “lighten”. This will blend the moon image into the blue hour scene. I have put together a more step by step article and video on how to do these blending steps at Creating Fine Art Images of a Moonrise Using Photoshop Blending Techniques – Light and Landscapes (johncaplisphotography.com).
If you want to put together a composite of multiple moon images showing its progression across the sky, you will have to experiment with stacking different moon captures to see which ones will give you proper spacing and separation across the sky. If you messed up the timing at any point in your series, you can easily adjust the position of a moon image to achieve the proper spacing. The steps to accomplish this repositioning are also covered in the article and video above. Here is my final composite image of the moonrise progression blended into my blue hour scene. The size and position of the moon displayed throughout is true to the scene. The individual captures of the moon were adjusted in processing to ensure the gradual color change and brightness of the moon was reasonably well preserved while maintaining visual balance.
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