On Wednesday morning, I left the house at dawn with two goals in mind – capturing the setting full moon over Marblehead and a few images using my new Phantom drone.  I started by crossing the causeway and saw the beautiful full moon in my rear view mirror.  I had charted out its descent the night before but, when faced with the moon that morning, I found myself struggling with the right shooting spot.  I ended up driving down Foster Street, up Harbor Avenue, down Corinthian Lane, back up Nahant Street, down Ocean Avenue and finally deciding on Harvard Street.

As the moon descended, I set up with the gigantic Canon 600mm lens and found the composition too tight.  I quickly changed the camera to a vertical orientation and shot this image as a 13 shot panorama.  The panorama allowed me to shoot the full cold moon and star over Marblehead including the now familiar steeple at St. Michael’s as well as that of Grace Community Church.  The details in the final image (all 120 megapixels) are awesome and I couldn’t have been happier with how the final image came out.

Starting next week, I’ll be doing my Top 10 images of 2016 countdown leading to the annual New Years Day slideshow.