A Moon Never Hurts

On clear morning, when the dome of the sky is cloudless from horizon to horizon, I can see the line of sunlight from the Earth's shadow start at the top of the bluff on the shore opposite my house and creep down the bluff until it lights up the houses and reaches the lake. I've always thought it might be a good idea to get up before dawn and photograph it. This morning, opening the shade and looking out, I saw the day was brilliantly clear, and the shadow was halfway down the bluff, and I thought—a thought I often think—"Too bad. I should have been out there with the camera. Oh well."

Then I saw it—the Beaver moon, as this full moon is named, was setting above the bluff. I don't live right on the lake—what I like to say is that if my house were on the lake, it wouldn't be my house—and I thought, well, how fast can I get dressed and get down there? I shifted gears into hurry-up mode (like shifting the car from second straight to fifth), threw on some clothes, grabbed the camera, and jogged down to the lake—in my slippers! That's more exercise than I normally get all day, by the way. I'm generally better at naps.

Et voilà: Moonset.

(View large image)

[UPDATE Wednesday evening: This image and the one at "View large image" are variations of the first one I posted Wednesday morning.]

The rising sun has just reached the houses on the shore. That little slash of cloud wasn't there when I was looking from the window; it simply appeared; but that's all right, I like it. I think I can process this better eventually, once I understand it better—hey, even Ansel had to work on his "Moonrise" for years before he got it right. But that takes time. This was just taken a couple of hours ago.

Photographers are always looking for accents, something to save a scene from being just a scene. An oncoming car, a lone seagull—and the moon often serves this function. Every picture needs its punctum. The great 20th century curator John Szarkowski began a lecture about his own photographs by showing several slides while he talked about the fact that he didn't know, because no one can know, what really makes a good picture. Then he reached the punchline: coming to a slide that showed a ladder reaching into an apple tree, he said, "One thing I do know is"—on comes the slide—"a ladder never hurts!"—and suddenly the audience realizes that every picture they'd seen so far had a ladder in it*. The line gets a laugh.

Well, ditto for the moon, sez me. "Moonset" is no "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico," and I'm no Ansel Adams, and I like it all the same. After all, pictures can refer to and echo other pictures, right?

Mike

P.S. This picture is cropped to enlarge the main subject a bit. This is the first time that I've wished I had this lens, or this one...the first time I've had any GAS at all since I started photographing with the Sigma fp(m)'s in late August of this year. GAS always gits ya, no matter how happy you are with what you have.

*Compare John Szarkowski's comments (he never liked me to call him just "John" when he was alive—too familiar) with this comment by Keith Cooper of Northlight Images: "This is perhaps the difference between color and black-and-white. And I've found it takes people quite a while to get used to it. Once you do get used to it, you don't even notice you're doing it. And that is to think of shadows, particularly deep shadows, as objects in your composition. Now, this is very similar to the idea of negative space in composition, where what isn't there, and the shape of what isn't there, is as important as what is there; but, in black-and-white, it's much easier just to say, think of shadows as real things. As objects. Because that's how they can look." (Source)

Featured Comments from:

aaron c greenman: " The moon illusion is fascinating, and still unexplained as to why the human brain makes the adjustment. This past August in Crete, the moon rising above the horizon seemed so large (and so red) as to be almost impossible. Because everyone was so mesmerized (and reaching for their cameras), all the businesses on the harbor side turned off their lights to give a better view. But as impressive as the moon was to the eyes, it remained as small as normal in all our photos—which proves that it is a mental phenomenon, not an optical one. Anyway, thank you for the beautiful B&W shot of the lakeside in the evening...reminds me of my several years in Ithaca on Cayuga Lake."

robert e: "An unexpected bonus of waking up ridiculously early to help open the polls this (US) election day was seeing the lunar eclipse. The sky was crystal clear, too. What a picture: red Mars and red-shouldered Orion overhead and the red 'blood moon' low in the sky. I don't know what kind of equipment and skills could have captured that whole scene, but I didn't have either with me."

Comments

[Albert Smith]

I remember 40 years ago, I shot a full moon on every frame of a roll of B&W film, using the rule of thirds placing the moon in the upper two intersections alternating left, right, left, right. I used a telephoto lens and used the sunny-16 exposure to maintain detail in the lunar surface and to keep the sky totally black which allows for subsequent exposure.

I later reloaded that roll (after rewinding with leader out) and shot moonless night cityscapes with a wide-angle lens to exaggerate the disproportionate scale. It was trial and error, but when it worked it was pretty neat. This was photo shop before there was digital photo shop.

I later got more into reality and stopped trying to alter what was before me, but yeah, a moon can improve a bland scene.

[Dave Stewart]

This post had me checking roughly how many moonrise photos I've "Blipped" over the years. A few:
https://www.blipfoto.com/search/entries?q=%23moonrise+%40PeninsulaLight

[Grant]

Ah ha. This moon position - size thing explains why my photos look so good on the camera's LCD and so bad on my computer's monitor.
TOP has answers for everything.

[Kent Wiley]

Way to go on the moonset! I tried to get that Tuesday morning - and failed. But I got this the night before.

[GKFroehlich]

@ robert e:

Check this out: < https://amazingsky.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/total-lunar-eclipse-wide-view-nov-8-2022.jpg >

[Eric Anderson]

Fun with Perceptual Vision Zoom - Visual Accommodation

Get hold of a camera phone capable of performing a 10x digital zoom, Mike’s note taking iPhone 13 Pro for example. Any smart phone capable of at least a 10x zoom will work.

Hold the phone at a typical shooting distance, run the camera app and pinch to zoom onto something close (~1 meter away) like a coffee cup until the screen image shows the cup as the same size as what you see directly – as if the phone screen were a small sheet of clear plate glass. Note the zoom factor (I get ~4.7x for example).

Now do the same with a distant object like a mail box across the street or the top of a tall tree down the road, and note the zoom factor (I get ~8.8x for example).

Running this demonstration among friends we consistently see an approximate 2x camera phone zoom ratio between near and far focused subjects.

For more fun: Make two photographs of an object, one each using the near and far zoom factors, focusing on something round or spherical maybe three meters away. Compare the size difference of the object in these two photographs – compositing them into a single image is instructive as insight into the moon illusion.

Unfortunately the moon is much too bright to display clearly focused on a smartphone, so the mystery of the moon illusion remains mysterious.

And, yes, 70mm - 90mm (35mm equiv) matches what I see visually in my angle of view.

Stay curious,

- Eric

[Speed]

Apparent size of the moon ...

There are no official rules as to how close or far the Moon must be to qualify as a Supermoon or a Micro Moon.

The following definitions are used at timeanddate.com:

Supermoon: A Full or New Moon that occurs when the center of the Moon is less than 360,000 kilometers (ca. 223,694 miles) from the center of Earth.
Micromoon: A Full Moon or New Moon that takes place when the center of the Moon is farther than 405,000 kilometers (ca. 251,655 miles) from the center of Earth.
A Super Full Moon's angular size is 12.5%–14.1% bigger than a Micro Full Moon, and 5.9%–6.9% bigger than an average Full Moon (in years 1550–2650).

https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/super-full-moon.html

[Dillan]

I just want to say, "isn't photography great for getting you off your butt?" I can see myself trundling down the hill to the lake in my slippers too. That is part of the joy of photography, for me. It gets me off my butt. I tend to wander the woods looking for photos. I don't know if I'd do that if I wasn't carrying the camera. I'd be missing a big part of my life.

[Mark Sampson]

That's a lovely moonset photo, Mike.
If you take another look at Adams' signature image, you'll see that the moon itself is quite small in the composition. And he used a 24" lens on his 8x10 camera, the equivalent of an 85mm lens on FFD or 35mm.
The landscape the moon rises over in that picture is quite spectacular, and Adams generally printed it quite large, which also helps. And of course, he did lots of work in the darkroom to get the result he wanted.
But a real key to that picture's success (as in your moonset) is that there is light in the foreground. A little study will reveal that the "Moonrise" negative was made the day before the full moon, so the sun is still up to light the subject, just the opposite of your moonset image. Another common factor between your two pictures is that both were seen in an instant, and made very quickly before the light and subject changed.
And remember, next month you can try it again!

[Tim Wilson]

Mike - In your adventures with the new Sigma, are you using a filter for the shots you have posted? I seem to remember you talking about shooting with a yellow filter in your film days. The brief metadata doesn't say and the detailed metadata is just too damned detailed for me to tell. :)

[

Yes, I'm using a Tiffen Deep Yellow filter now and I just ordered a Heliopan #15 dark yellow. The later is expensive and available only on special order, but the Tiffens are made by sandwiching a gel filter between two disks of clear glass and the Heliopan is dyed optical glass. --Mike]

[KeithB]

I went out to leave for work this morning and saw Mars right next to the just-past-full moon. I debated about getting out the camera and the 150-600, but the fact that it was 30 degrees F helped me decide to go on to work.