Mesmerized by the moon - November 2024

Mesmerized by the moon

Oh how much I love the moon, I love staring at it and I'm always drawn to the full moons when they are here. For years I've noticed that I automatically get affected by full moons in a way that's not always very pleasant, like getting very emotional and on edge but I haven't experienced this in a few months. Maybe it's because I started using wild yam ointment as I read that it balances the hormones. But that's another story.

A few months ago I was mesmerized by the moon above the sea, visible from our balcony. The moon had a warm colour and it was there being her perfect self. How I wished that I could have captured it even if it was just 50% of its beauty, sadly I could not. None of the phone cameras in the house could deliver and I was even more frustrated than I normally am when these attempted pictures won't capture the beauty as I see it in the very moment.

A brand new camera

Although I think it was already in my posession last month with the full moon, it still feels as if my Sony RX10 III camera is brand new because I yet have to learn so much to capture things around me in different circumstances. Saturday we went to Granada and of course I took the camera with me because who knows I see a moment that needs to be captured, glad I did!

Even though we did not finish shooting some profile pictures for our friend, while we drove in the car from one shop to another, I was mesmerized by the moon upcoming from behind the mountains while we drove on the highway. It was truly breathtaking! I didn't have the camera with me in the car so I was a bit annoyed that I could not capture this very moment even if we stopped somewhere, but at least I knew when we'd be back at our friend's house, I had a shot to capture the moon.

Already warned that the moon would not be partially behind any mountains anymore, I was still excited to give this a try.

There it was!

I went straight to the balcony to check where the moon was and thankfully for me it was in sight, without any clouds. The only thing I now needed was to figure out how to capture it with the camera because the realisation came that I still didn't manage to do that before.

Youtube videos with the title on how to capture the moon ended up being not what I needed, a lot of talk without actually showing it, gosh I hate clickbait when it comes to tutorial content. In the end I just took the camera, sat on the chair outside and started trying out different settings. Yes, I really just started to move around everything step by step for as much as I knew how to and it was frustrating to see a big white light bulb at first:

But then if you watch closely, the next one already shows a bit more detail in the top of the picture.. and in the third one, you can see the clouds and more detail of the moon as well. Ending with the fourth attempt where I started to get really excited because finally the moon appeared in my pictures!

A bit of clouds in sight in the fifth picture and then the clouds were gone for a bit and I jumped up (for real) running to my boyfriend to show this picture. I know it's probably far from perfect but seeing these detail parts of the moon in the picture was new to me and I was thrilled with excitement!

Milestone moment

I think it's funny that the moon has this tiny dot as if it's a watermelon and I always "see" these black spots as a sunglasses with a dogs nose, haha. Yes, every month again and again, this is what I see when I look at the moon... can you see it too? LOL maybe I'm just crazy, that's fine as well!

Either way, I wanted to share this milestone moment in my photography journey here because I'm really happy that I've made a step forward. Sadly, the moon was not visible from the balcony here at home yesterday so I could not test my skills further but I will check it tonight, a bit earlier it may be in sight from our balcony.

Wishing you a great week ahead!

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All pictures above are my own and taken with my Sony RX10 III camera.