Super MoonOn Saturday, we experienced an unusually large moon known as a "super moon" or a super "perigee moon". A super moon is when the moon, following an elliptical orbit around the earth, makes its closest approach to the earth (when the moon is at its "perigee") and when the moon is fully illuminated. A super moon is a very rare phenomenon—the last occurrence having taken place in 1993.
 
Unlike Friday, the sun set on Saturday before the moon rose. The weather was also perfect. The biggest challenge was going to be one of composition. I would have liked to get a shot of the Capitol framed by the moon. Using The Photographer's Ephemeris, I charted out the path the moon would take. From the perspective of standing on the National Mall, it would rise to the southeast of the Capitol and follow a path moving to the northwest. The moon would look its largest while closest to the horizon and the Capitol would look smaller relative to the moon the further I stood from the Capitol. So, ideally I would stand far away from the Capitol to the northwest. Unfortunately, the line of sight from the northwest was blocked by buildings and trees. If I got closer, the Capitol would dwarf the moon and block it until it rose way above the horizon. I thought I might get the shot if I stood on the northern edge of the Mall near 4th Street. Apparently, many other photographers had the same thought, including a nice Associated Press photographer I chatted with while waiting for the moon to rise. Flexibility saved the day. The shot from the Mall never materialized. Thinking quickly, I decided to frame another object with the moon—one that was significantly smaller than the Capitol and one that would be high enough that I could get the right angle. So, I shot the Statue of Freedom from northwestern parking lot of the Capitol. I think it turned out quite nicely. Also of note, while I was waiting for the sun to set and the moon to rise, I took this shot of the Washington Monument. I'm very happy with this image. Can you see the airplane in the bottom left-hand corner headed towards Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport? Full Worm Moon
On Friday, Washington, D.C., experienced a full worm moon. The worm moon rose behind the Capitol and traveled across the sky, following the path of the National Mall. The last time this happened was last September and, like in September, I met up with the Flickr DC Social group to shoot the moon.
The shot would have been very good if the sun weren't still up and there hadn't been so much atmospheric haze. It would have been even better if the moon were close to the horizon, where an optical illusion would have made it look enormous. However, the sun was so bright that when the moon was on the horizon, it was impossible even to see the moon, not alone photograph it. Fortunately, later in the evening, I was able to get some fine shots of the moon. I'm quite happy with the way this one turned out: 
Sunrise at a snowy Great FallsFor some time now, I've been wanting to get some good shots of Great Falls in a wintry setting. So, when it snowed here a couple of weeks ago, I figured that I should take advantage of the opportunity. Because the snowstorm hit during the middle of the week, I was initially inclined to wait until the weekend, but I was afraid that the snow would melt before I could get to the falls. So, I got up early and drove out to the falls before sunrise. I figured that if I was fast enough, I'd be able to get out there, shoot the falls, and then drive back into town and get to work before the office opened. I was rewarded with the following:
I took this image at 7:43 a.m. using a 12mm focal length and an extremely small aperture of f/25. I also used a Nikon circular polarizer II stacked on a Hoya Pro1Digital 0.6 neutral density filter. This was necessary to get a super slow shutter speed, which I needed to obtain that smooth blur effect with the water. With this image, I was able to achieve a 2 second exposure. While I think it looks fairly nice, I do think it would have looked a bit better if I had been able to get a 3 or 4 second exposure and thereby blurred even more of the water's movement. Shortly after 8:00 a.m., the sun broke through some low-lying clouds and projected some nice light on the cliffs. I took the following at 8:14 a.m.: 
The light was too intense to obtain a shutter speed of more than a second, even with stacked filters and a super small aperture. So, for this image, I used a more reasonable aperture of f/11. With the neutral density filter and without the polarizer, I obtained a shutter speed of 1/40s. While the water isn't as striking in this second photo, I like the early morning light on the rocks. The light is much less flat, giving the rocks more character. Also, this second image is significantly sharper than the first because it doesn't suffer from diffraction, which on my camera, affects images taken with apertures smaller than f/11. While most of the images I shot were taken with the same composition as the first two photos, using wide angles and such, I decided to experiment with some longer focal lengths. I think the following turned out nicely, though not as well as the first two: 
On another note, while we didn't get more than a few inches of snow the previous night, the storm caused quite a few problems for the D.C. region. The snow was very wet and heavy. All of the Federal offices opened late because of the snow, including my own, and many homes lost power and heat. The drive at 6 a.m. out to the falls was somewhat treacherous. Many roads were closed and unplowed. Of the roads that were open, I had to be careful and navigate around abandoned cars and fallen trees. I was very grateful to have all-wheel drive. The following is a photo of Old Dominion Drive, the road in Virginia leading to and from Great Falls Park. I took this on my way out of the Park, driving just behind two snowplows. If you think the road looks bad in the image, just imagine what it might have been like at 3 hours earlier, before any snowplows had touched the street. 
Exploring wide angles in the Capitol
Last weekend I spent some time exploring the Capitol with my new ultra- wide-angle lens (Nikon 10-24mm). All of these were taken at 10mm and processed using Aperture 3.
Here's a fun note about the following photo of the statute of President Garfield. You can also find him in the above photo; he's the statute immediately to the left of the doorway. There was very little space between the statue and the wall. 
Mountains and Clouds revisited
In my last blog entry, I posted a photo of Alexander Calder's Mountains and Clouds sculpture, which is located in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building. I shot the photo with a new ultra wide-angle lens that I had purchased, viz. the Nikon 12-24mm. Since then, I exchanged that lens for the newer Nikon 10-24mm ultra wide-angle lens and revisited the atrium to take another shot of the sculpture. 
I think this version turned out nicely. If you compare it with the previous version, which I took with the Nikon 12-24, one of the first things that you may notice is that there's less of a problem with parallax or keystoning. This is because the Nikon 10-24 is noticeably wider and I was able to point my camera perfectly level with the ground and achieve the same composition. With the previous photo, I had to point the lens slightly towards the ground in order to capture the front-most potted tree. While the two lenses have only a 2mm difference in minimum focal lengths, the difference in angle of view afforded by 12mm (99°) and 10mm (109°) is quite dramatic in practice. |
