Talking Pixels

Well, I went out the evening before the full moon to try and get a shot of the perigee full moon. ‘Perigee’ is when the moon is closest to the earth in it’s elliptical orbit. This happens every so often, but this time it coincided with a full moon. I had a particular shot/location in mind, but after I got to the location I realized that it wasn’t going to work. So I scrambled to find another vantage point.

I ended up driving to a mountain peak that offered a good view east over the Los Angeles area, but saw there was a lot of haze at the horizon. So much in fact that viewing the moon would be impossible. Disheartened, I headed back the the original location just hoping that I was wrong in my assertion that I wasn’t going to get the shot as planned. Unfortunately, I was correct, so I just headed back home. As I drove through Agoura Hills up Kanen Road, I saw these trees up on a hill that looked promising. Swung around, but then saw a cop sitting across the street from where I wanted to park (which was a no parking area). Honestly, I was only going to stop for a minute….

Then it hit me. I’ll go to Cheeseboro Canyon and shoot there. I raced over there and found this shot. Got set up and took a few snaps. Unfortunately, it was too dark by the time I got there, so the dynamic range between the moon and the foreground was just too much for my camera to handle. I ended up exposing for the moon and pumped up the ‘fill’ in LightRoom to get this image. It’s pretty raw, but you get the idea I guess.

What really bums me out about this whole episode is that I did a fair amount of research on the location I was originally going to shoot using Google Earth and The Photographer’s Ephemeris. Everything looked like it was going to line up. In reality though, it didn’t. So, I guess the lesson learnt is that tools like those are only so good, and nothing really beats scouting the location ahead of time. A simple compass reading on location would have told me that the intended shot was impossible. Live and learn….