Who doesn’t love a full moon, late nights, and good friends? I just wanted to share so information about how this session went. So Cat actually called me a few hours before we decided to go out and try and capture the moon. It was supposed to be a super pink moon. We knew it was going to be a cloudy night, but we figured we would give it a try.

We meet up around 8:00 PM at Balboa Park. When we arrived, our “fears” were realized…it was super cloudy and there was no great view of the moon. We started by walking over to the Rose Garden. When we got to that side of the park, it was still super cloudy and we couldn’t see the moon. We had seen it briefly as we were walking over to the Rose Garden, but we were unable to see it once we got there.

Bea Evenson Fountain

We started off by photographing the giant water fountain. Here, we tried out some long exposure photography. I had fun editing these photos because I went for both a cooler (blue) look and a warmer (yellow/orange) look. Normally I like my photos to look a bit warmer, but I actually like the cooler look here. I had to find a balance with how long I left the shutter open so that the light from the fountain and the external lights didn’t blow out the images. I think I was able to strike a good balance. Which image do you like better?

Full Moon at Spreckles Organ Pavilion

Once we left the fountain, we continued to try and find the moon. I ended up downloading a couple of moon-finding apps. It was a bit frustrating because the apps were saying the moon was like right in front of us, but the clouds weren’t letting us be great. We actually ended up at Spreckles Organ Pavilion. We tried some more long exposure there. I wanted to try and catch more airplane trails. However, I struggled with capturing these shots because I had to balance how much light was being let into my camera so that I didn’t blow out my image. I was able to get a few shots that I really liked. Again, I did both a cooler and warmer edit. I’m not 100% happy with these images because there still seems to be a bit of blur in the images…it is something I will have to work on for my long exposure work.

We were about to give up trying to capture the full moon when we started to see some breaks in the cloud. I was too excited because this is what we came for. We eventually moved to the parking lot as we were getting ready to leave and the moon really came. I was too excited…I got some, what I consider, really great images.

These photos came out absolutely amazing and I loved them! The moon was providing enough to light some of the surrounding clouds and I think it looks spectacular.

I had a lot of fun just going out and trying to capture the moon. It required a bit of patience, but it was well worth it!