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Whaooah…has that moon been a delight or what?
Since grabbing these students doing daft stuff on the summit of Arthur’s Seat on the 16th the moon has teased me far and wide to harvest the best of this lunar season.
Taken from 600ft below I was completely wild-guessing that there would…eventually…be someone standing at that trig point. I won’t show you the 60 or so shots of the empty summit, so please trust that there was a good deal of time spent waiting…cursing…and moving my tripod every 30 seconds to keep it all lined up properly. Darned moon moves fast through a 500mm lens.
It was “freshers week” when all the new students are likely to do ANYTHING their new friends suggest so I had a high chance of eventual success. I cheered a little when the first wee silhouetted figures scrambled into view and then, WAHEY, one of them climbed on top of the concrete trig point.
I love the hair of the folk in the below shot, to the right of the silhouetted figures - that’s just the moonlight that is backlighting their hair.
The moon was more elusive the following night, dancing between veils and dipping in and out of visibility. We’ve all had nights like that. Our city centre Fame statue on the Bank of Scotland building on The Mound would have been forgiven if she’d just wheeched her giant pretzels into the crowd, and gone home to her bed.
I was in the streets below, doing a strange waltz with my bazooka lens on its tripod, picking it up and swaying sideways a few steps before setting it back down on its feet. People notice what you’re doing and soon there was a small scrum of folk around me pointing their phones in the same direction.
Which was when a plane moonbombed us before descending into Edinburgh Airport. I checked which flights had landed to coincide with this shot and Embraer RJ-145 was the only one fitting the silhouetted profile with its distinctive nose and tail. Loganair LM328 from Southampton landed just after 9pm on the 16th September - if you know someone who was on that flight wouldn’t it be great if they had taken a shot of the city centre out the window? You’d be able to spot me with my big bazooka lens cos you can see that from space.
l Iove that Embraer - a Brazilian plane manufacturer - sounds like our very own Edinburgh Airline when pronounced in our local dialect.
Are people looking at you now because you’re talking to yourself? Sorry.
Annoying as it was that the moon was behind clouds most of the time, and that it was difficult to get detail on the moon’s surface as well as the lit buildings, I actually love the atmosphere the scenes had.
This one below is now my current favourite from the set, but at the time it was just a consolation shot at the widest 200mm on that lens, whilst waiting for the chance to shoot tight in to the moon at 500mm. I love the colours and shades the moonlight brings out in the inky dark clouds, and the balance between the light in the sky and the building lights.
I struggled to fit everything in to this 200mm frame but I now realise the very neat fit corresponds nicely with the various compositional guides that you can use when cropping images. In particular the “Golden Ratio”, “Rule of Thirds” and “Triangle” options are all a good match.
When I teach photography I always stress the importance of reviewing your images and cropping them to make the very best of them. That includes straightening them but also being brutally selective about what you leave in and what you chop out and throw on the pixel scrapheap in the corner. With regular “post production” practice you’ll find yourself automatically doing the same thing when you are composing shots through the viewfinder of your camera.
For the proper full “Harvest Supermoon” the next day I planned a trip to a favourite spot in East Lothian - Barns Ness lighthouse. Nothing beats seeing the moon rising out of the sea. It makes it viscerally real how our planet is spinning in the universe and feels like an immense privilege to be able to stand and watch this miracle, and all for free.
The moon rose just after the sun had set on the opposite horizon, so in the shot above the colouration in the sky is referred to as the “Belt of Venus”. It’s the blue of Earth’s shadow rising into the pink of diffused sunlight from the last of the sun’s rays on our side of the globe as we spin round at 666mph.
As well as bending your head a wee bit the moon looks strange when it is seen through the layers of atmosphere.
This “atmospheric distortion” changes the shape and colour of the moon and as it rises it pops back into normal shape like a football being pumped up.
This image above made it into 4 UK national newspapers the next morning which was a small reward for many unsuccessful attempts at this particular scene.
The Harvest Moon is a wee bit special because for several days it offers moonlight from more or less the time of sunset right through to sunrise the following day. This would (in theory and a cloudless climate) give any hard-working farmer some useful light with which to gather the harvest, hence the name. It also helps photographers with the benefit of a bright sunrise or sunset sky lighting the surrounding landscapes and buildings when the moon is close to the horizon - more and longer photo opportunities in other words.
The final stage of my moonstravaganza was to try and catch it over the city centre from some distance. The further away you are the smaller the buildings appear, so the larger the moon looks in comparison. The moon stays the same* distance away from us, and therefore the same size even if we travel 1000 miles away, but any buildings or mountains obviously get increasingly smaller.
(*approximate distance - if you were driving at a speed of 40mph it would take roonaboot 5,791.375 hours to get to the Moon, and a few tons of fuel)
The moon is just touching the roof of the Hilton Carlton Hotel on North Bridge. Spot the dome of the Bank of Scotland building we featured earlier and compare the relative size of the moon..
…and so ends a week of moons, harvested in an unlikely spell of dry and beautiful weather. I have much to be thankful for and I do hope you enjoyed my images as much as I did making them.
If you think it’s a good idea to add some moon images to my greeting card range then do drop me a comment. The current range is over here.
Loved every one of these shots Tom. Truly “the moon did shine as bright as day”
Wonderful photos, the moon is amazing at the moment