Trade Secrets: Shoot the Moon

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|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2005-09-20

Trade Secrets: Shoot the Moon
Will Lester's photo of a plane passing in front of the moon is the seventh in a series of SportsShooter.com features called "Trade Secrets."

By Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Photo by Will Lester / Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

I have wanted to get this photo for quite sometime. It did not quite come out the way I hoped, because I have seen similar photos which were much better.

The first time I tried to get this shot was in May of 2005. With our office at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin literally up the street from Ontario International Airport I figured it would be a pretty easy shot to get. Wrong! The full moon would break the horizon around 8 pm and then I would have to need to wait for the moon to rise high enough so a jet would pass in front of it.

The problem that arose was the fact that the moon rises very quickly and jets were not constantly taking off or landing from Ontario. I needed to plan on where the moon would be when jets would begin to arrive. At Ontario, which is not nearly as busy as LAX, the landing planes come in spurts of 3-5 planes per hour at night. On the other hand, at LAX they are constantly lined up for final approach.

So the first night I went out I was able to get a few of the LAX jets coming in over the Inland Empire but the problem was that their altitude was way to high to make a good photo even while using a 400 2.8 with a doubler. I missed one shot of a UPS 747 taking off from Ontario only because the plane rose slowly and went just under the moon with me only being able to get the tail at the bottom portion of the moon. If I had been approximately 100 yards further back it would have been positioned perfectly, filling about 75% of the moon with jet exhaust distorting the left side of the moon.

I waited til June to give it another try. I came out of a store at approximately 9 p.m. and noticed that the moon was positioned right in the flight path into LAX plus I was 20 miles closer to LAX so the planes would be significantly lower. I was able to get about 10 different jets flying through the moon on this evening.

Another staffer was using the 400 2.8 so I had to use a 300 2.8 with a doubler. I spot metered the moon using a daylight setting. Exposing at about 1/640 second at f 5.6 at ISO 640.

The photo ran on our A2 page at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin at approximately 2 1/2 columns in black and white.

Like I said, it is not quite the photo I was hoping for, but I will keep trying.

Will Lester is a staff photographer for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Southern California.

"Trade Secrets" is a series of educational features where SportsShooter.com members reveal the inside-information about how they were able to create a specific image (or two.) To nominate an image for this feature, please send a message to the SportsShooter.com admin staff here: http://www.sportsshooter.com/contactus.html The SportsShooter.com admin staff reserves the right to accept, or not accept, any nomination.

Related Links:

Lester's member page