From studying the movement of the sun and moon on the Photopills app, all the elements were coming together for January’s full moon rising over Hastings town in east Sussex just after the sun had set behind the south downs in the west.
When I first moved to Bexhill, in the evenings after work, it was a novelty and pleasure to walk along the coast with my camera especially if it coincided with low tide . One evening completely by surprise I witnessed Octobers full moon rising on the horizon just after the sun had set.
Wolf Moon
January’s full moon is also known as the Wolf moon after the wolf’s would howl hungrily outside the villages this time of year. This January’s full moon was also a super moon, this is where the moons orbit is closest to earth, this point is know as the Perigee. I dont think there would be any wolf’s howling around Hastings, but with the sun just having set behind there would still be light in the sky to hopefully catch a good image of the rising moon.
I parked up on Galley Hill in Bexhill, then walked down onto the beach towards Hastings to find a good spot to set up my camera and tripod. Another element that had come together was it also coincided with low tide revealing lots of foreground interest to include in the form of rocks and boulders.
Clouds over Hastings
Some clouds are good for reflecting light but not too many, do not want the clouds to obscure the rising full moon on the horizon. Sods law is whenever there is some astronomical event, its thick cloud. Hopefully I would be lucky tonight.
I waited patiently on the beach for the full moon to rise, but there was low clouds hanging directly above Hastings as the golden hour turned into the blue hour. The super moon should be visible now.
Still I was getting some nice exposures on the beach during low tide with some rocks in the foreground and the lights coming on in Hastings town. If I was lucky the moon would put in an appearance soon enough.
Full Moon Arising
Through the thick cloud I could just see the full moon peeking through, in a few more minutes it would rise into a clear patch hopefully.
Every minute now it was getting darker which required constant readjustment of the exposure settings. In low light its best to set exposure to manual and take full control of aperture and shutter speed.
Later than I hoped for, the full moon over Hastings becomes fully visible, the sky was darker than I would have liked hence the moon is alot brighter, like the sun. shame about that band of cloud. I was focusing on the foreground rock, but may have been better to focus on infinity, on Hastings town itself. I was using a wider aperture and higher ISO to get a faster shutter speed to avoid to long an exposure so that there was no blurring of the moon.
Super Night
I thoroughly enjoyed photographing the moon on the beach that night and looked forward to further opportunities to do so in the future now I knew how to plan for it using tools like PhotoPills. Now I was going to enjoy some fish n chips and a few beers back in Bexhill and then post process the photos in Lightroom.