What a weekend! I chased the moon quite literally from moonrise to moonset starting on Friday night and ending on Sunday morning.  The sturgeon moon (as August’s full moon is called) was also labeled as a supermoon for being 8% larger than a regular full moon.  With that in mind, I again borrowed a super zoom in the hopes of replicating one of my all time favorite images – the supermoon setting over Abbot Hall taken in March 2011.

On this occasion, the moon set proved much trickier with Saturday’s descent occurring 30 minutes before sunrise and Sunday’s taking place an hour after the sun rose.  Neither was ideal but the conditions were forecast to be better on Saturday morning so, at 5:00am, I was up and out of the house headed to Chandler Hovey Park.

The supermoon was truly impressive as it made its way in the early morning sky.  It appeared as a deep yellow-orange ball and I prayed for more light from the sun to help balance the incredibly wide range of reflected light off the moon and relative dark of Marblehead harbor.  In the end, the sunlight didn’t appear in time so I had to make the best of modern technology.  I captured five images in succession exposing for the difference between the too-bright moon and too-dark harbor.  At home, I carefully blended each of the five exposures of the moon to make for a natural appearing image.

I should point out that the moon really was this big (at least with the help of the superzoom lens).  The only adjustment I made was to balance the wide range of light between the moon and harbor so that one wasn’t overwhelmingly bright or dark.