I took this photograph on March 4, 2026, at 19:33. The result reflects two fundamental elements of photography: careful planning and familiarity with one’s gear.
As mentioned in a previous publication, I used The Photographer’s Ephemeris to identify local vantage points that I could reach in less than twenty minutes. The weather forecast was favourable, and moonrise was at 19:23.
I arrived at Bellerive Park 15 minutes before moonrise. I intentionally left my tripod in the car! When I saw the rising moon just above the distant trees, handheld, I took my camera with my 600mm lens and set the metering to spot shadow mode. I focused and metered on the moon.
To obtain a perfect exposure (ETTR), I intentionally overexposed the scene by 5 stops. Using an f/4 aperture and ISO 6400, this gave a 1/6sec exposure time.
To ensure I captured the full dynamic range of the scene, I programmed the camera to take three exposures with a two-stop increment, allowing me to merge them later into an HDR image in Lightroom.
I was very confident relying on the Olympus stabilization feature to obtain a clear image. Also, Lightroom is very good at reducing noise in post-processing.
Once again, I was happy with the planning and gear familiarity results!
On April 1st, 2026, the moon will be full and will rise at 19:16. I am ready!
