Solstice Moon, first quarter
June 22nd, 2007 · 7 Comments
I’m not one of those flowy-skirted goddess wymmyn types, but I do enjoy a good summer solstice moon. I shot this one last night from our balcony just to see if I could.
One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen was in a movie theater parking lot on Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, California, where I lived many years ago. There was always one of those guys who would set up a giant telescope and charge people a buck to see whatever planets were available that evening. I’d seen him there for years but never checked out his deal. One insanely hot early summer night, me and my friend Susan had just been sprung from some random movie (we saw movies mainly for the A/C—the Valley is hot as hell). We weren’t in a hurry to return to our respective sweltering apartments, so we ambled over and gave the guy a buck. (He let us young ladies go two-for-one.) I looked into the scope and saw Saturn, rings and all. It was truly amazing and I looked at it for quite a while. A huge planet, gajillions of miles away, visible to me on Van Nuys Boulevard. And considering how long it takes light to get from there to the earth, I was actually looking into Saturn’s past. Trippy. It’s the only time I ever looked through a telescope, by the way, and the only planet I’ve seen in that detail. We’re totally getting a telescope when we move out to the sticks.
The cool thing about planets is that they don’t have particular habitats. I can see the moon, my friend Susan in California can see it, and so can you, wherever you are. Happy summer!
Tags: Moon
7 responses so far ↓
1 David // Jun 23, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Beautiful photo! It reminded me of an evening when I was about 8 and my dad set up a telescope on the porch for my brother and me to look through. I haven’t thought of that night in years…thank you for bringing back a great memory!
2 AmyKlarer // Jun 23, 2007 at 11:06 pm
That settles it (almost). I’m giving up my hi-tech 35-MM Canon EOS camera and going back to the Power Shot S2 IS. I took a photography class and now all my shots are the pits. Iris, I am jealous of all your great pix!
Okay, ranting is over. Great moon shot, and I’ve been told that it is very difficult to get a good picture of the moon. But you did it! Would you mind sharing the camera settings? (ISO, F-stop, exposure time, etc.)
3 Iris // Jun 24, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Amy, you’re gonna freak out when I admit that I shot the moon on the Auto setting. I did have the Raynox teleconverter attached, zoomed to maybe 18x. I color-corrected the image a tiny bit in Photoshop to get rid of the yellowish hue and did a very minimal hard-light sharpening layer.
My professional photographer friend Ben says to use the “sunny 16″ rule, but I’m not sure I understand how that works yet.
4 sandy // Jun 25, 2007 at 12:23 am
I NEED your camera…want to donate it…its’ a write off…I could be considered a charity case because of my old camera..
These are great shots…
5 David // Jun 26, 2007 at 10:04 pm
For anyone interested in camera settings, I went out and tried to duplicate Iris’ beautiful shot with my camera on manual settings. The best results were at 1/60 sec at F11. Apparently you have to REALLY underexpose for the moon. And use a tripod. (You did use a tripod, right Iris??? If not, well, I’m insanely jealous of your camera!
6 Iris // Jun 26, 2007 at 10:08 pm
David, don’t make me break your heart. If you want to call my elbows propped on the railing a tripod, then yup, I used a tripod.
Thanks for the manual setting info. I’ll give that a whirl next time.
7 David // Jun 28, 2007 at 10:33 pm
You either have the hands of a surgeon or one king-macdaddy camera. Amazing!
PS Thanks for the post about “my baby.”