"SUPER" Supermoon November 2016!

Well, it was an exciting week for photographers!  I'm sure you've all heard about November 14th's Supermoon?  It was the last time we will see a full moon this big for another 70 years apparently.  I was thrilled to find that the weather was good both the night before and the night of the Supermoon.  The first night, I went to Spring Point Ledge Light, and the moon looked big and beautiful, but nothing like the night of the full moon:

The night of the full moon was a huge difference.  But it was a much more challenging shoot.  It was full dark, being over 30 minutes after sunset, so I had to juggle with settings to be able to expose for both the moon and the lighthouse.  At first, it worked well:

 It was unbelievably large and beautiful!  There were tons of other people on Long Sands Beach with me, all along the beach--I am not sure how many, but possibly as much as 100?  It was such great energy.

Once the moon rose a bit more, however, the shoot became even trickier, possibly because the moon was so darned bright.  So I began taking one picture to expose for the lighthouse and island and one picture to expose for the moon, so it wouldn't just look like a big white disk hanging in the sky.

In Photoshop, I superimposed the two shots together and erased the white moon and let the moon from my "moon picture" shine through.  I think it looks pretty good!

I hope you all got to see this amazing vision for yourselves.  I'm so glad I drove all the way to York, Maine (an hour) to share this experience with so many other nice people.

Cynthia Farr-Weinfeld, Maine Landscape Photography
http://www.cfwphotography.com