Chasing the moon

My plan was to find a good location to shoot the full moon as it was setting, which is when the lunar eclipse would be starting. Although I've taken moon photos through my telescope, I usually like to include something that gives the photo a sense of place. My idea was to frame the photograph to include the High Point Monument in New Jersey. Here's an image to show what I had in mind:



I used a program called "The Photographer's Empheris" to figure out where I needed to be to get the moon and monument together. I found the right spot in the darkness but could not get the picture I had planned.

My first problem was that the lights were not shining at the monument, which made focusing on the monument difficult. My second problem was the clouds were obscuring the moon. By the time I got everything set up, the moon was slipping behind the mountain.



Then I drove to another location with a better view of the western horizon: the scenic overlook off Interstate 84 above Port Jervis. I'd shot the moon from there before. But this time the valley was covered in fog, which I love to shoot. The lights of Port Jervis were even shining from beneath the fog.



Since the moon was still fairly far from the horizon, I drove to Port Jervis and then back east on 84 to shoot from the eastbound overlook, which is higher. Unfortunately there were clouds near the horizon that I did not see. Here's the moon just visible above the clouds:


By this time the sky was getting lighter, so I concentrated on the fog for a few photographs.





Look carefully and you can see the white base of the flagpole at Elks-Brox Park above Port Jervis. Here's a photograph I took from near the flagpole in October of 2006. You can see High Point Monument in the background, which brings us back to where we started, photographically.