Chasing Light

Fog over Forest Grove

Light is, of course, the most important thing in photography. Chasing light and the right conditions is a never ending task for photographers of any skill. Celestial events like the Supermoon early in December prompt people like me to head out trying to catch the perfect scene.
 I struggled with a Supermoon before in Ireland. The moon is surprisingly difficult to photograph. Just aiming your camera at the moon and getting a decent picture is easy. It is so bright that the camera can easily adjust. It is even easier when your brother-in-law lets you borrow his 150mm - 600mm lens and a teleconverter to get a nice close-up ;-)

Clouds moving in across a highly magnified moon

 Taking a landscape picture at full moon is also not that difficult. The picture at the top is an example. I lucked out with the fog and am glad that one worked out because all of my Supemoon pictures from that night did not. Getting the landscape and the moon as anything other than a glowing orb into the same picture is hard. Even HDR struggles with that.
 Running around and waiting for clouds and fog to move just right brought, along with very cold toes, some other delights. Not far from where we live, a neighbor has setup an extraordinary Christmas light show. When I drove by the first time, I thought someone really had gone to town with the blinking lights visible literally from a mile away. Then Lee Ann saw a post on Facebook that recommended to turn on your car radio: The blinking lights are synchronized to music!

 It is very well done and quite artistic and imaginative. I have spent several evenings down there so far, trying to capture it just right. I din't want it to be pitch black with just the lights coming on, although that does look cool. I asked Darin who installed and programmed it, to turn it on earlier in the day. I was hoping more ambient light would make it easier for my camera to capture the show.

 The problem is now there is too much light. At least at the start. As the sun sets, the contrast gets better and the sky light is less distracting. But now my camera is trying enhance the scene and make up for the lack of light. Learning more about shooting video, especially at night, and turning more things to manual helps. One evening was very overcast and that actually helped to keep the ambient light at a more even level:

 And one more:

 January 1st will be a full moon. We'll be out of state, but I hope that just before or after (if the display stays up that long) the weather will clear. I imagine that a full moon, especially with snow on the ground, might provide just the kind of light I envision.
 There are other impressive Christmas displays in our neighborhood. I took the one below two years ago, but it looks puny to what seems to be standard this year.

 At our house we have a few icicles and a small tree with lights that come on when the timer does what it is supposed to do, which seems to be every third night or so. Lee Ann had big plans to decorate the tree in our side yard, but it is so tall I can't reach the top, even with the ladder fully extended. So, we're not even in the competition. Our street alone has much grandioser displays, but there are other areas in Forest Grove that put our whole street to shame.
 Since we cannot compete with artificial lights, I went back out a couple of nights after the full Supermoon. Since now the fog had gone, I needed to think of something else. You can see the neighborhood where we live from across Gales Creek Valley and The Photographer's Ephemeris told me that the moon would come up, nearly full, right behind the hill we live on, I went and took the picture below.

The neighborhood we live in from across Gales Creek Valey

 Sort of. It's actually a composite of two pictures. One of the moon where houses are in complete darkness, and another of the houses with the glaring-like-the-sun moon cut out.