The Day (or two!) After a Full Moon

Moon Over Boulder. Boulder, Colorado, 2015

The “day (or two) after”, rather than the exact date of the full Moon, is my favorite time to think about a landscape photograph with the Moon hanging just above the horizon right after sunrise. This makes the tonal range much easier to capture–the brightness of the Moon is not so different from the surrounding scene once the Sun wakes up–and the long first shadows and early morning light on the undulating terrain features can be beautiful.

Shooting the day of the full Moon, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult because the Moon will be very low or setting just as the Sun gets high enough to equalize the bright Moon with the darker landscape. You can shoot earlier, while the Moon is higher in the sky, but the sky and terrain will be even darker and the contrasts much harder to capture in a single image. With tall mountains very close to you on the western horizon, or if you are in a valley, the Moon will be gone still earlier–when the sky and ground are quite dark. If a high contrast image is what you are after, all of this might be just fine for you. (See such an example below in which I let the Moon “blow out” with a slight star effect.)

Some alternatives…

The above example was a capture from December 27th, 2015, two days “after”. (The “day after” had been an obvious lost cause due to a low overcast in the morning.) In this case, the Moon was a waning gibbous disc at 94% and the spread between sunrise and moonset was just a bit too long (sunrise at 7:22a.m., moonset at 8:48a.m.). I would have liked the Moon lower at sunrise–and a few sunrise-pink clouds in the sky, too!

Ideally, you can find “a day (or two) after” that will give you some better variables.

First example: On January 24, 2016 (a “day after” the full Moon) the sun rises in Boulder at 7:16a.m., then the Moon ( a 99% disc) sets eight minutes later at 7:24a.m. With this situation, you’ll get the Moon very low just as the Sun’s rays hit the landscape. This could work as long as terrain on your western horizon does not point up more than maybe 5-10 degrees above the “real” horizon. If I were shooting the same scene as above, though, there is a good chance that the Moon would fall behind the mountains before the Sun rises.

Second example: On January 25, 2016 (two days “after”), the spread is much better. Sunrise in Boulder occurs at 7:16a.m. and the Moon doesn’t set until 8:01a.m. (97% disc). This means the Moon will above a level horizon for some 45 minutes after the sun strikes the landscape, thus giving you a bit of time to find the best compositions. With high terrain in the west, though, this time will naturally be reduced.

Another very rough way of looking at this last situation is that the Moon, at sunrise, will initially be about 10-15 degrees above the horizon at my latitude (a fist or so at arm’s length)–is that high enough for it to be above my western mountains at sunrise? Probably so, as long as I am not pegged right up against said mountains, or in a deep valley.

What morning you choose to go after the Moon all depends, then, on your goals. Do you want to challenge yourself with a high contrast scene, or do you want to work with a more evenly-lit landscape?

Here are two excellent sites to check for appropriate planning and scheming info:

–The U.S. Naval Observatory Sun and Moon Data (for times on specific dates) [NOTE: This link/website is offline until Autumn 2020 due to mx/upgrading.]

—The Photographer’s Ephemeris (also gives you angles from any location to where the Sun rises and the Moon sets)

Moon Over Boulder, Pre-Dawn. Boulder, Colorado, 2015