Super Moon Eve

As I said in my last post, I missed the super moon for the second time this year. It was a tough choice with the heavy clouds moving in throughout the day. Do I stay on low ground and hope that the clouds break at moonrise or do I head up into the mountains to see if I can find any iota of a sunset? I decided to roll the dice on the latter which worked out well for the Sunday Sunset Challenge.

Even though I chose the sunset, I still positioned myself so that I could be in place to shoot the moonrise at an overlook that was only a half-mile away. The moonrise would start 15-minutes earlier than the sunset; however with the way that the clouds were setting up, the sunset would be over earlier and the mountains would delay the start of the moonrise for me. The first part played out according to plan. The moonrise, though, was completely blocked by cloud cover from the mountains. I was able to see it peak out of the clouds on the drive home once I was in the valley but without enough time to find a location and setup for a shot.

Super Moon Composite from my Backyard

This image is from the evening before the super moon. Comprised of three photos, it is a heavily edited rendition of what I kind of saw that night. It is definitely not the greatest moon image ever but it was fun to craft.

August Sunset Challenge

My friend Kevin Keyser over at Keyser Images has been posting challenges periodically on Facebook with last night's being the August Sunday #PostYourSunset challenge. It provides some motivation to get out and shoot as well as inspiration from some of the great images being posted. Last night the focus for most was the #supermoon.

This is the second super moon this year and I was looking forward to photographing this rare event; however for the second time, cloud cover hid the moon from my lens. All day long the sky was heavily covered in clouds. I drove up to Skyline without great expectations that I would see either the moon or a decent sunset. Much to my surprise, the sky opened up to the west about a hour before sunset. More clouds were building along the horizon but for a brief moment, there was potential. I opted for the Rockytop overlook as it had the cleanest westerly view. The clouds moving in from the  west dampened what could have been a spectacular scene. I can't complain as I did get a couple of good images out of it including the one posted below.

Rockytop - Shenandoah Valley, VA

Although I missed last night's super moon, I did take a few of the night before warmup. I haven't checked them yet. If there is something worth viewing, I'll add it to another post.