Introduction
For the ones following me on Instagram, you may have noticed that last weeks images stood out from the rest. I posted three landscape images taken during the night and in the light of a full supermoon. Let me take you with me on the spontaneous journey that led to the creation of these images.
How everything started
You may have read news about a supermoon in April this year. Here they were all over the place – but as busy as I kept myself I largely ignored them. What is a supermoon anyway? Turns out, this is when the moon is closest to the earth and there is a full moon at the same time. In this situation, the moon appears slightly larger than normal. You can ready about it here on Wikipedia.
Anyway, time passed by and the supermoon on April 27th 2021 was approaching. When I started seeing articles on our national (!) news about the upcoming supermoon and that people were preparing to photograph it, I couldn’t ignore it any longer. On the evening of April 26th – so the evening before it was about to happen – I fired up photopills to check the situation around me. And it looked like indeed the moon would line up with my favorite rock near me, the Ankeballe in the Juramountains in Baselland, Switzerland.
By the way, Photopills is one of the few apps on my phone I paid for, and it’s freaking amazing to prepare your landscape photographs in a multitude of ways. What you are about to read is definitely not an example of great planning, but I would absolutely recommend Photopills if you want to do a better job than me 🙂
The preparation
Preparation – if you can even call it that – was very short and minimal. In photopills I saw the the moon would line up with the Ankeballe towards the morning. The app also told me how high the moon would be over the horizon at a certain time – which for this morning was around 11 degrees. The problem is that the actual horizon in this area is not level, and depending where you stand you may look up or down on your subject. This will of course change completely whether the moon is directly over the horizon or far above it.
Apart from this, the preparations needed were: putting a reservation on my car (using car sharing here), packing my camera bag, and gathering some food / drink supplies. And the worst: putting the alarm on an insanely early time 😴
And while the area is somewhat familiar to me, I was not sure from where I would want to shoot exactly. So obviously, any planning at this point could only be: The moon seems to line up somehow, lets see on locations what works… More importantly, the wheather was fine, we were supposed to have mostly clear skies.
Getting there
So I woke up a couple of hours later, made some hot tea, threw food and drink into my camera bag and headed out. Since I was not sure from where I would be shooting and how long it would take me to find the right place, I headed out about an hour earlier to give myself some headspace.
It took me about 40 mins by car to get near the location. It’s a bit off the beaten path, and so usually it still gets very dark at night. But this night, the moon was amazingly bright. Everything was lit up, I was able to perceive colors and clear cut shadows. The “supermoon” clearly lived up to its name!
I walked about 5 minutes through the forest when I spotted the first possible composition. However, the foreground was not to my liking, and so I climed up the hill to my right in order to be able to see over some trees and to be more on an eye to eye level with the Ankeballe itself.
The Shoot
Setting Up
And so about 10 minutes after arriving, I found my spot on the side of a hill, looking towards my subject and with a beautiful view into the distance. Of course it was now much too early, the moon was way off from where I wanted it to be for my photograph. And so all that was left was to sit there and take in the landscape before me.
Normaly, I sleep in my bed at night and open my eyes only the next morning. And so it was for the first time in a long time I looked over a moonlit landscape with only little light pollution. The supermoon along with a little bit of sahara sand dust in the atmosphere added to the mood. It was simply beautiful and peaceful to be there!
I set up my tripod and started taking a few shots with various compositions. Just to get an idea what worked better and what was needed to shoot in these conditions. I noticed rather fast, that shots with a long lense were much more appealing to me. But the longest one I had with me was the 70-200mm, and 200 mm were already on the short end. And so I decided to give my 2x extender a try.
Full Moon Layers
Usually I refrain from using my extender, because it leads to some degradation of the image quality. And I really like a clean and sharp image for my landscape photography… While the quality loss is not really noticable if you share a small version on social media, looking at it on a bigger screen or even printing the image is where you start running into problems.
But hey, what was I to do. This was my only option in this situation and I went for it. And man, I’m glad I did. The image below was taken while waiting for the moon to get close to the Ankeballe. The mood in this image, the different blue layers, along with the orange-yellow sky… The combination of these aspects are what drives the picture home for me.
April 27th 2021, 05:23
Canon EOS R
93 seconds | f / 8.0 | ISO 400
EF70-200 f/2.8L IS III USM + 2x extender
Ankeballe Supermoon
It took another hour until the moon moved above the Ankeballe. And well, it was a bit higher up than I anticipated, but a vertical composition worked just fine. Once you try to get your settings dialed in and want the moon to be well placed in the shot, you start to realize how fast it is actually moving across the sky. In a matter of minutes the composition created itself and disappeared again.
April 27th 2021, 06:14
Canon EOS R
1/10 second | f / 9.0 | ISO 100
EF70-200 f/2.8L IS III USM
Cradled Supermoon
You can imagine that past this point in time the moon would move away from the Ankeballe to set further to the right. But before taking the previous image I started to notice some illuminated specs right below me: probably better prepared photographers, showing up on time for their predetermined composition. Since I felt I got my shots from the current position, I rushed downhill and a bit to the left. Result: the supermoon was lining up with the Ankeballe again, and this time much closer. So I took a couple of shots, this being one of the last ones where the moon was cradled by the trees of the Ankeballe, only 7 minutes after the previous image was shot. Notably, by this time most other people there already packed their gear…
April 27th 2021, 06:21
Canon EOS R
1/15 second | f / 8.0 | ISO 100
EF70-200 f/2.8L IS III USM
Conclusion
All in all, it was a night to remember. Only minimal planning panned out greatly for me this time. And sitting for hours in a moonlit landscape was just ❤
I’m considering adding one of these images to my landscape photography portfolio. Maybe you have a favorite? Don’t hesitate to let me know down below in the comments.
Thanks for reading through my blogpost
Make sure to leave a comment below and visit me on Instagram @twj.st.
Schön, dass du uns mitnimmst auf deine kleine Reise. Auch wenn du den Trip nicht lange im voraus geplant hast, hatte das offenbar keine negativen Konsequenzen 😉 Auch aus Spontanität kann Tolles entstehen. Die Bilder sind alle sehr schön und stimmungsvoll. Aber wenn du schon nach dem Lieblingsbild fragst, muss ich gestehen, dass mir das ohne Mond am allerbesten gefällt. Da sieht man die vielen Ebenen so schön und das Bild strahlt so viel Ruhe aus. Auf Platz 2 steht dann das, wo der Mond quasi direkt auf dem Ankenballen liegt. Das ist fast schon etwas surrealistisch und bringt einen grossen Überraschungseffekt mit sich.
Danke dir viel mal! Das ist mal ein Beitrag den du nicht schon im vorhinein gesehen hast 😊 Bezüglich Lieblingsbild geht es mir genau so, das Panorama ohne Mond gefällt mir am besten. Das ist natürlich nicht so ganz mit dem Titel des Beitrags vereinbar. Aber ist auch wieder etwas, das man nicht voraussehen kann. Ich nehm was ich kriegen kann 🙂