A couple of months ago there was a Harvest Moon.  I actually missed but not before I tried to take pics of it.  It had happened the night before.  Anyway, before I realized this I decided to try to take some pics of it.  I put my camera on the tripod and went out on the deck.  I got everything set up and then starting playing around with manual mode.  Since I really had no idea what I was doing, I decided to google it.  I found the settings I needed but it still wasn’t working.  I ended up calling my dad at 11:30 to get a quick crash course on shutter speed.  Turns out I hadn’t gone up far enough on the dial to get where I needed to be.  So yes, I’m admitting I’ve just now figured out manual mode.  Mostly because I didn’t understand the shutter speed settings on my camera.  Whomp whomp.

After a few tries I actually got a few pics of the moon, not the Harvest Moon, but the moon.  It was a step in the right direction because something about this task made manual mode finally click for me.

Fast forward to Saturday night.  It was the first of 3 Super Moons this summer.  As Matt and I left dinner, I noticed how big the moon looked.  Dad had texted me to see if I was going to take some pics but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see it from the house.  Once we got home, I looked out and saw I had a pretty good view of the moon.  I grabbed my camera and tripod and headed outside.  I got everything set up and started taking pics.  Much to my surprise, they looked pretty good on the screen.

I waited till I got to work this morning before I looked at the rest of the pics.  There were a few that sucked, but overall the majority were pretty good (and they turned out!).  You can’t really get the full effect of how big it was because I didn’t have a good backdrop for comparison.  I mean the neighbors roof wouldn’t really add much, right?  But the big win here is that I FINALLY took a pic of the moon!  🙂 And I know how to do it again!

As you can see, my moon pics drastically improved from my non-harvest Harvest Moon pics. (The one above is really the best one I got.)  Plus, by the time I figured out what I was really doing, the clouds were starting to roll in.  Regardless, I’m really impressed with my latest try!

~k