Super Moon

I set out to shoot this weekend's Super Moon, I had been planning the event the whole week--I was so excited, even though I had never successfully photographed the moon in focus with the correct exposure in camera. I loooove astronomy so much, I am passionate about it- I love photographing star trails, the moon was the last thing for me to figure out. So I did a ton of reasearch and headed out to view this year's super moon. I headed out with my daughter and her friend (little Grace) to my location-not a pretty location, just lots of flat land and treeless, but outside the city limits and away from the street lights. I set up the tripod, and looked for the moon in the East-I knew it should have risen, but couldn't see it at all. It was way too cloudy. We waited and waited, the girls thought they were cold so they grabbed blankets out of the car and wrapped themselves in it to view this exciting moon that was supposed to come out. More waiting... More waiting.. I decided to put away the tripod, I packed up the car and looked back up to the sky and noticed an orange glow behind a cloud, almost appearing--so quickly I put everything all back together and we saw the moon for about 3 seconds--LOL but it was BEAUTIFUL!!!! And then it was covered in clouds. But it was so pretty, the girls and I decided collectively to wait to see if it would appear again. And it did!!! I messed around with exposure and bracketing, and finally came up with a formula. Which of course varied every few seconds with the amount of cloud cover over the moon. But it was so worth it!!!!!!

 I returned home and captured these from my yard. By that time, the moon was really high in the sky and the orange glow was gone.

 A sort of artistic rendition with leaves from the trees framing the moon.