When my daughter Olivia was a baby she was fascinated with the “mun”, which is what she called the moon. She would point it out riding in the car and often we would have to go out in the front yard and say goodnight to the “mun”. My baby girl is now 8 years old and tonight I found out she is still fascinated by the moon. Her great grandparents called to tell her about the Supermoon which is in the sky tonight. According to scientists it would appear 14% bigger and 30% brighter at its peak because it made its closest approach to the Earth in 18 years. Pretty cool!
I was upstairs in Olivia’s room when I heard her yelling at me to come down quickly and look at the moon. She was telling me to “Hurry, hurry before it goes behind the clouds, Mom!” So, in our pjs and robes we ran out to the front porch to see this Supermoon that was illuminating the whole neighborhood. I had to go grab my camera and tripod to capture it. Much to my excitement, Olivia also ran to get her camera (my old Nikon D70 SLR) and her tripod (from our old camcorder).
As I set up my shot to zoom in and capture the details of the spots on the moon, I was explaining to her about exposing for the details of the moon vs. exposing for the sky and clouds it was illuminating. I wanted her to understand that those were two very different shots. If you want to capture the details of the moon you expose for the gray spots on the moon, but if you want to capture the sky and clouds around the moon, you need to expose for the middle gray color in the clouds. If you expose for the details of the moon, everything around it will go black because the moon is so much brighter. If you expose for the sky and clouds surrounding it, the moon will be overexposed without detail. Of course I was trying to explain this on terms an 8 year old could grasp!
I took my shots and showed her a few on the back of my camera. She was eager to take her own shots, so I moved my setup and helped her get her camera on her tripod. I manually exposed the shot for her using the 18-70mm kit lens that stays on her camera and she started shooting away. That wider angle lens brought in the clouds and trees and made a beautiful composition! Then she asked me for her zoom lens (70-300 mm) to give the detail a try. I had been using my zoom lens to just get the moon detail, and after seeing her images I went and grabbed my wider angle lens to shoot what she had been shooting. Sometimes you just need to see things through the eyes of a child!
After a mother-daughter day of shopping, sharing a treat at Tip Top and bike riding on the Lakeshore Trail, this night had just topped off a perfect day! My husband Brad and our son Luke had a pretty perfect father-son day together too as Brad took him on his very first turkey hunt!
I had been invited to second shoot a wedding today, but had passed up the opportunity since I had just shot a wedding the first weekend of spring break and this one was the last weekend of spring break for the kids and opening weekend of turkey season for Brad. As much as I enjoy shooting weddings with my friend and REALLY REALLY wanted to do it, now I know why I wasn’t supposed to make that choice this weekend. I want to make moments count…in my photography…and in my life! Today that moment was bike riding with my daughter and tonight it was capturing the “mun”.
