Snow Moon - First Supermoon of 2020! February 9th 2020 - Yolo County, California

 Another outing with the Olympus camera Test and Wow program.  This time I wanted to see how it held up in low light by shooting the supermoon.  To be honest, the resulting photos were a bit noisy.  But let it also be known that I am hit or miss when it comes to night shots.  lol  But that won't stop me from trying!  

But usually I  do some research and refresh my memory on settings and tips.  But on this trip, I didn't really do that because I didn't even have a tripod available and just kind of decided to head out on the spur of the moment. 

I had one main target.  The Milk Farm sign off Interstate 80 in Dixon. 

This is an historic landmark of sorts which was almost demolished.  But it still stands to this day and most folks probably drive by without even much of a glance. 

The Milk Farm Restaurant - which the sign originally heralded - was built in 1928 and was featured in the famous Saturday Evening Post in 1940 which kind of put Dixon's dairy industry in the spotlight. 

I remember stopping there on church outings back in the 70's & 80's (even though now it seems like that is just a hop, skip, and jump away so it's weird that we always were ready for a rest stop at that point back then!)

And then it closed in 1986, the year my daughter was born, due to serious wind damage.  But residents of Dixon didn't want it destroyed, so the building was dismantled and placed in storage and the sign was left standing!

It has a cow jumping over the moon and I thought it might actually frame the supermoon and look cool!  But!  I needed a lot of things to happen right for the perfect execution.  And it didn't.  haha

But to start, I pulled over at the Yolo Basin Wildlife Area (where surprisingly the gate was open) to see if I could get a photo of the moon over Sacramento with some water.  

Again, no tripod so I shot all semi-longer exposure by putting the camera on the roof of the car.  :-)

I propped it at the right angle by using my fleece jacket.  :)  Luckily the moon was pretty low to the horizon in all of these shots. 

This first one was a closeup of just the moon with the 300mm lens.  It was super, super noisy!  I used DeNoise to try to tone it down with mixed results. 

A slightly less cropped version with less noise. 

I kind of like this one shot between two trees! Noisy, but looks cool. 

And now!!  The famous Milk Farm Sign!

And the story is that I sat here in my car - in some driveway to a farmhouse (which was pretty long so I didn't have anyone wondering about me - or so I thought).  I sat there for quite some time waiting for the moon to rise high enough to get over the sign and HOPEFULLY be in the right spot.  

It was a little bit cold and a little bit scary, but I was just off the freeway so I didn't think a serial killer would get me.  

But!  I think I was even more nervous when California Highway Patrol car pulled up and parked just off the road kitty corner to me.  After about 10 minutes, the car started up and pulled closer to me and the copy put his spotlight on my car.  He walked over and I, slightly embarrassed, explained what I was trying to do. 

He said he was on his lunch break and said he would hang around to make sure I was okay.  I, again slightly embarrassed, told him that I would just leave because I had taken some test shots of the sign illuminated by my car's headlights and it wasn't really bright enough to see the sign.  

He very sweetly offered to put his car spotlight on the sign so we gave it a try. 

It worked!  Kind of!  It was actually even better when the moon was above the sign (which took about 10 more embarrassing minutes) and the sign was not so backlit!  With both my headlights and the spot light this time, the moon DID align how I had hoped and I was able to get a shot that is halfway decent!!

The Moon Jumping Over The Cow Jumping Over The Moon over the Milk Farm!

I used post production in Photoshop to lighten the sign a bit more and bring back some detail in the moon, but having the CHP spotlight on the word "Milk" really helped me achieve my whimsical dream.  :-)  

The very nice CHP officer and I parted ways after I promised to drive safely back home.  He seemed quite amused that I had driven 20 minutes and sat in my car for about 20 minutes to get one crappy photo!  lol  

xoxo

Super Blood Moon - The Aftermath! St. Sava Orthodox Church Jackson, California

I love night time.  I've always really been a night person and just love to be out and about in the beauty of the darkness with the stars and moon shining above me.  That's one reason why I get so excited about lunar events like super moons and eclipses.  

This month was no exception as we experienced the Super Wolf Moon a couple weeks ago.  But I had some real, REAL! technical difficulties so I decided to edit some more photos from last January.  Haha!

This post kind of piggy backs on my trip to Mendocino for the Super Blood Moon, so I will post up the links here for that trip.  Be sure to check them out because it was an amazing trip full of beaches, flowers, and adventures!

The Super Blood Moon and Bowling Ball Beach at Sunrise

Beaches of the Mendocino Coast and the Gorgeous Birds that call them Home

Oh So Amazing Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens

Dragons, Bugs, and Fuzzy Flowers

Beautiful Food Photos at the Gardens By The Sea

I got some amazing photos and had a wonderful trip, but I've got to admit that every time I go on a road trip for a Supermoon, I have misgivings once it's over.  I always worry that I didn't get good photos or wonder if I should have done something different.  

In this case, I had thought about a trip to Jackson, California because I thought it would be cool to get photos of the moon with the beautiful St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church there.  So a couple days later, I realized that the moon was still Super, even if it was no longer bloody! (Okay, that didn't sound right.)

So I made the relatively short drive to Jackson, got set up beside the church, and started snapping away. 

The church is on a narrow street which has a hill on the side the church is on.  There are some steep steps leading up to a sidewalk that runs just in front of the beautiful cemetery.  

Day or night, this is one of the most gorgeous churches and cemeteries I've seen.  I need to go back during the day and see inside if that's possible. 

Pretty soon the moon began to rise, almost directly behind the church!  My plan worked!  (So many times it doesn't or I don't follow my plan, more accurately, and then get myself in trouble.)

Okay, I'm not going to lie (and you can probably already tell!) but that's a composite I did of two photos.  I'm not skilled enough to get truly clear pictures of the moon with the church clear too.  But I did get some excellent shots of both!

The moon is a little misshapen because this was a few days after the full moon as these were taken on February 2, 2018.  But the craters are spectacular detail in some of these shots!  I amaze myself with my amateur equipment sometimes. 

I did get one awesome shot of the moon and you can see the roof and monuments from the cemetery too. 

But it was too difficult for me to get detail in the moon when zoomed out.

This was the more normal result. 

Here's another weird one.  But I like weird.  It looks fuzzy and almost painted and yet there is some detail in the moon and the church shows (at least part of it) so I'm happy with weird art.

This is the beautiful entry gate; built in 1894.  

This next one I shot from across the street.  I had to shoot from the side, so everything first appeared crooked.  I had to straighten then and in doing so, cropped off some of the wide views.  I'll have to go back and see if I can get some shots with the stairs and other angles. :)

And, last but not least, a couple of final rudimentary composites!

xoxo

Nikon D3300