Full Moon Archives

May 5, 2015

May 4 Full Moon

When I headed out to get something to eat tonight, a big orange moon was just clearing the trees. I pulled off long enough to snap off a couple frames of the moon, but it didn’t have a very interesting background, so I let my tummy make the decision to keep going. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

I knew from experience that if you aren’t in position to shoot the golden orb in relation to a landmark, forget it: you’re never going to get there in time.

Traffic light at Mount Auburn Road

I putzed around in a fast food joint waiting for my order to come up, and wasn’t disappointed to see that the moon wasn’t visible when I left the parking lot. I didn’t really want to feel guilty about not making another full moon photo.

The darned satellite was waiting for me, thought, when I hit the traffic signal at Mount Auburn Road. Fortunately, I caught the light when my lane was stopped. I shot it with the red light, too, but the green arrow seemed to work better for me.

These won’t go down as my favorite moon shots, but they were too good to pass up.

August 11, 2014

August 2014 Super Moon

After reading all the hoopla about yet another Super Moon, I checked the moon tracker on my Droid smartphone and told Mother we’d better saddle up so I’d be ready at 6:46 when the moon was supposed to rise at 110 degrees, slightly south of east. I calculated that the terraces at the River Campus would be a good place to use the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge as a foreground object.

6:46 came and went. Then 7:00 and 7:15. That’s when I discovered that my moon ap thought I was still in Florida. I was an hour early. I cut a nap short for nothing.

That gave me plenty of time to shoot the trees in the gathering twilight, the river hiding behind a curve and a couple getting acquainted on the old bridge’s overlook before the moon made its appearance.

Super Moon photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

October 21, 2013

Moon and Temperatures Rising

I left Cape late, but I had good intentions of making Athens, Ohio, in a straight run. What I hadn’t counted on was a one-hour traffic jam between Nowhere, Illinois, and Not Quite to the State Line, Indiana.

Except for putting me behind schedule, it wasn’t that bad: I just munched on junk food and cranked up the audio book on World War II history I was listening to.

When I looked in the rearview mirror, though, it was apparent the young couple behind me was having a lot more fun than I was. They smooched through the whole moving parking lot. I kept waiting for their windows to fog up.

(I cropped out their license tag for the same reason I’d stand on a table in some cowboy bar and say, “I’m fixin’ to take some pictures for the paper. If you aren’t supposed to be here or you aren’t supposed to be here with the person you’re with, stay over in that corner of the room.”)

That’s SOME moon

A couple hours later, I pulled into a rest area for a 22-minute nap. When I got on the entrance ramp to get back on the Interstate, I thought I was looking at a big Gulf Oil sign. There was this huge orange ball hanging in the sky like a gas station logo.

I was already committed to getting on the road, so I resisted temptation to shoot the moon (so to speak), but I finally had to pull off on the shoulder to bang off half a dozen frames through the windshield. It was one of those times I wished I was a passenger: that silly moon kept teasing me with great photo ops for the next 45 minutes.

Scads of deer

Friend Jessica’s husband and a buddy went deer hunting last night and each bagged one for the freezer. I told her it would have been easier for them to drive along the road and pick up the dozen or so I saw on the shoulder after getting into Ohio. I hope the occupants of whatever vehicle hit them came out better than the deer.

Jessica lives on 40 acres so far out in the wilds of Athens County that the Lady in Sky who talks to me through my GPS kept asking, “Are you SURE?” Just as we pulled onto her driveway, a deer came running across the road in front of us.

August 21, 2013

Blue Moon, Clouds, Lightning

I noticed the moon was big when I was unloading the van last night. Wife Lila pointed out that tonight was the Night of the Blue Moon and suggested we go to a nice place on the beach for dinner and to watch it come up.

Just like when I shot the full moon over Tower Rock last month, the cloud show at sunset was arguably better than the moon. Click on the photos to make them larger.

One minute the clouds were white.

Then the sky caught fire

In a matter of seconds, it was like someone had touched off a massive brush fire in the sky.

The sky got angrier

Just before all the color disappeared, the sky got angrier.

The moon made a brief appearance

I was chomping away at my dinner when the server came over and pointed up at the sky. According to my handy-dandy Moon Phase program, it wasn’t supposed to rise out of the ocean for another 12 minutes or so, so it caught me by surprise.

It made a brief appearance, then was eaten by the clouds, giving me an excuse to turn back to my food.

Here comes the storm

A heavy thunderboomer was off the coast moving to shore. I kept trying to get a good lightning shot, but most of the flashes were well to the north of us. This was the best I could come up with. It didn’t begin to compare with this video I shot of a storm out to sea.

So, it wasn’t a GREAT night for full moon pictures, but it was a fun evening. The company was good, at least.