When I first heard that a supermoon was due to rise in November, I dismissed it as ‘yet another supermoon’ (it seems we’ve had two to three of these each year since the last really big one in March 2011 which I used for the cover of my book). It was only later that I realized that the moon was making its closest path to Earth since 1948 and would indeed be a supermoon to rival and beat that 2011 one.
With that in mind, I made several plans for capturing the wonder of this full Beaver moon. First up was upgrading my equipment. Thankfully, a friend in town owned the Canon 600mm lens which I had had the good fortune of borrowing once before. He readily agreed to hand over the beast of a lens again and, as of Thursday night, I have been exploring the world of Marblehead through this super telephoto lens. The other issue was deciding where to shoot the supermoon. I went back and forth on location and foreground elements before deciding that I couldn’t pass up the chance to shoot an enormous moonrise against the backdrop of Chandler Hovey Park and Marblehead Light.
And so tonight, I made my way to Ferry Lane along the Marblehead Harbor and set up for the moonrise. I thought haze at the horizon might spoil the shot but the moon was able to push its light through the atmospheric conditions to put on one incredible display. I was thrilled to see people gathered at Chandler Hovey Park adding one extra element as the supermoon rises over Marblehead Light.