Supermoon Planning 9th March 2020

We have all seen beautiful images of a perfect Moon rising majestically behind a ruined castle/ church spire / fantastic rock formation. These images do not happen by chance - they have been carefully planned and plotted so the photographer is in the right place at the right time. I had my own plan for such an image; how did I plan it and did I execute it as intended?

The Opportunity

On the 9th March 2020 there will be a Supermoon, when the Earth-Moon distance is closer than normal, making the moon appear noticeably larger. This is particularly apparent when the moon rises, as the Earth’s atmosphere distorts the Moon’s disc. In order to photograph this phenomenon, you need clear sight of the rising Moon, and crucially, a foreground object to give some sense of scale otherwise it could be just any old Moon, anytime. Composition makes or breaks these types of image, so finding a location for a ‘Supermoon rising’ photograph takes planning and a large dose of good luck.

I will be enjoying a week’s staycation in South Devon from Monday 9th while my wife is away at a conference. I scouted some locations on Google for a spot to watch the Moon rise just before 6pm. I found the perfect spot: Start Point Lighthouse with a clear eastern horizon. The plan is to capture the Moon rising behind the lighthouse in the foreground, in perfect weather conditions. Well, I cannot control the weather but everything else is under my control. I need to be at an exact spot at the correct time with the right equipment.

PhotoPills

PhotoPills is a brilliant app for photographers. It does so many things - many very technical that I don’t fully understand - an has very good downloadable PDF guides to help make sense of it all. One of its features I use is the Planner. This is an user friendly interface to plan where the Moon or Sun will be from a geographical location, on an exact date/time and looking through a described setup of camera and lens/ telescope. Locating a red pin on the map sets your location and a second black pin sets your target object, in this case the lighthouse. Setting the time and date correctly, the app proves that if I am setup on the coast path just south of the lighthouse, the Moon will rise directly behind it.

Choosing my equipment

Having proved that the shot is possible for the date in question, I can now enter details about my camera and lens to enable Photopills to help me with focusing, Field of View (FOV) and Depth of Field (DOF). Entering your equipment into the app gives your the ability to mix and match cameras to lenses or small refractors. This alters the ‘image cone’ (my term) showing how wide the shot will be from the red pin looking towards the black pin. The interface allows you to play with f stops (aperture) to see where the infinity focus point falls; if this is before the lighthouse then if the lighthouse itself is in the focus, anything behind it (the Moon) will also be. I toggled through various setups until I found one that looked good: a Canon 600D body onto a William Optics Whitecat 51mm APO giving me a focal length of 250mm at f/4.9. This would provide a fairly tight composition around the lighthouse with the Moon and should cover the first 10mins of Moon rise before I’d need to re-position the tripod.

Doing a Recce

I’ve never been to this part of South Devon before, nor the lighthouse at Start Point. I searched for images on Google to give a sense of the landscape and the lighthouse itself. What this showed is that the lighthouse is set down below the footpath on the cliff edge and a rocky promontory with a cluster of small buildings at the base. I would need to be positioned due west on the coastal path. This point appears to be higher than the lighthouse, which Google also tells me is 28m tall. Entering both the height of the top of the lighthouse and the height of the red pin into PhotoPills suggests that from my location, the top of the lighthouse will be right on the horizon, so as the Moon rises it will be emerging from the top of the lighthouse. It is therefore important that I tweak the red pin position to align with the exact point in time when the Moon will emerge above the lighthouse.

Would I be alone?

By now I’d convinced myself that this was going to be of of the greatest photographs ever taken, and that other people must have had the same idea. Would I be alone at Start Point? Would I be shoulder-to-shoulder with dozens of other photographers on the coast path, vying for the perfect spot on the red pin? Would I get lens envy as I gazed along the line of enormous professional cameras and lenses assembled like paparazzi? All I knew was I had to get there in good time and see what would work on the day. I would need to make a list is advance of everything I’d need to get the shot. I would take a backup camera as I may even have the chance of using a second handheld camera or GoPro to record the event in both telephoto and widefield format.

Supermoon T minus 1

With one day to go, I used PhotoPills to see where the nearly full moon would rise when viewed from home. By luck, it would appear to rise above a local landmark, Brown’s Folly, a stone tower on the hilltop overlooking Bathford and the river Avon. This coincidentally is another shot I’ve previously planned on PhotoPills

I went upstairs to the bedroom where I’d get a better view - and there it was, just emerging over the ridge as predicted. I grabbed my camera and zoom lens and ran off a few frames.

So - how’d it go?

It didn’t. It rained. I sat inside and had cake.

The end.

Update!

So I did eventually make it out to Start Point, on Wednesday 11th March. I still wanted to see what kind of shot the PhotoPills planning would have produced. It wasn’t the clearest of days and the wind was very strong, but I took these snaps for prosperity. It shows the Top of the lighthouse was actually well above the horizon and the cliff edge to its left was far more steeply inclined than I expected. If the weather had been with me it could have made a great photo.