Moonglow and the Impossible Picture

Many of you might have noticed when I made several posts on Facebook about how bright and beautiful the moon was and how badly I wanted to take a picture of the reflection of the moonglow on the water in front of my house. The problem wasn't just as simple as taking the picture.

I was trying to take the picture using a camera that my dad gave me and I haven't spent a great deal of time working with it to do specialized shots. Add to that the fact that I don't have a tripod and that I was dealing with ambient lighting from just about every direction and you can bet that I was pretty frustrated.

Over the course of two nights, I took over 100 shots. The sky didn't get dark enough to start trying until 11:30pm, the moon didn't come into clear view until between 12:00 and 12:30am, and the moon was close enough to the horizon that I couldn't take any more pictures by 2am. This gave me right around 2 hours to get the shot I needed IF my camera was set up and I was ready when everything lined up correctly.

The first night ended up being about an hour of me trying to familiarize myself with my camera settings and about fifteen minutes of actual photography, taken intermittently between fits of frustration and swearing. I used my kids' up-turned wagon to steady my camera.

On the second night, I tried to prepare everything in advance. I camped out by the living room window so that I could get started at the earliest possible moment. I took a sofa pillow out with me and stood on the back bumper of our Nissan Pathfinder, balancing my camera on the pillow and the luggage rack, while I stretched myself as fully onto the roof as possible. In between pictures, I would cautiously look around behind me because bear season is in full-swing and there was already a spotting one street over from our house. While our street almost never has bear sightings, it was still pretty intense being out there all by myself in the dark with nothing to comfort me but the sounds and movements of the forest and ocean. I had to wrap my session up early, though, not because of bears. A happy little cloud (by which I mean an enormous and dense cloud) decided to move in and usurp my moon.

Ok, now for the good part: PICTURES! All of these pictures were taken with my Nikon Coolpix E8800. Individual photo information will be listed below each shot.

ISO: 50
Exposure: 1/60 sec
Aperture: 5.2
Focal Length: 356mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 1/250 sec
Aperture: 5.2
Focal Length: 356mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 1/60 sec
Aperture: 5.2
Focal Length: 338.2mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 1/30 sec
Aperture: 5.2
Focal Length: 356mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 1/30 sec
Aperture: 5.2
Focal Length: 356mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 200
Exposure: 1/8 sec
Aperture: 5.2
Focal Length: 89mm
Flash Used: Yes

While waiting for the moon to get into position for pictures of the reflection in the ocean, I snapped a couple of shots of my neighbor's ground-lit flag.

ISO: 50
Exposure: 2.0 sec
Aperture: 3.8
Focal Length: 32.4mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 2.0 sec
Aperture: 3.8
Focal Length: 32.4mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 2.0 sec
Aperture: 3.9
Focal Length: 40mm
Flash Used: No
Post-editing: sepia filter for contrast display

ISO: 50
Exposure: 2.0 sec
Aperture: 3.9
Focal Length: 40mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 4.0 sec
Aperture: 3.9
Focal Length: 40mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 4.0 sec
Aperture: 3.9
Focal Length: 40mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 8.0 sec
Aperture: 3.9
Focal Length: 40mm
Flash Used: No

ISO: 50
Exposure: 8.0 sec
Aperture: 2.8
Focal Length: 8.9mm
Flash Used: No
Post-editing: cropped