Say Hello to the Strawberry Moon

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've been blogging or on social media at all, really. It's a busy time of year for me with gardening and a lot of cleaning/organizing. Anyway, I'm back with a quick post about tonight's full moon. This moon looks almost like a harvest moon, which is surprising for June.

June's full moon is known as the "Strawberry Moon" and will be the smallest moon of 2017. In fact, I saw some people referring to it as a "minimoon".

I like this photo, because it looks like the moon is wearing a little garland of leaves around its head. (That's a tree branch)

There are other names for June's full moon. I'm not sure why, but it's also called the "Oak Moon", "Cold Moon", and "Long Night's Moon". Those last two make no sense to me, because the nights aren't cold and long in June. Actually, I feel like I heard one of the full moons in the winter called a "Cold Moon".

If you're wondering why June's full moon is known commonly as the "Strawberry Moon" that's because Algonquin tribes knew this as a time to gather fruit. (That's according to the Farmer's Almanac.) The Almanac also lists this as the "Full Rose Moon" and "Honey Moon". Those names I can figure out. It seems this moon has lots of names, but then June is a time with lots of moon naming inspiration. The Farmer's Almanac page is worth reading:

The Mini Strawberry Moon

If you get a chance, it's worth looking in the sky tonight! The color of this full moon will give you a feeling of autumn a few months early.

Tonight's Super Bright Super Moon

Did you all get out and see the Super Moon? Tonight, the moon is the closest it has been to earth since 1948!

It was so bright, I actually had to look away from the camera as I took some of these pictures.

I was zooming way in. Something I've noticed about photographing Super Moons is that they give off a pink and purple glow on my camera's screen as I'm taking my pictures. That doesn't happen when I take photos of the regular moon. Unfortunately, the pink and purple doesn't show up in the pictures.

You can see a bit of the ring around the moon that I saw, though.

I like the way the tree branch appears to be holding up the moon in this one.

 

I took a photo using the flash and got this neat, orange glow. There's a bit of green there too for some reason.

It had been a bit cloud covered at first.

 

Last night, the moon was looking more gold and not just with the flash. It was that Harvest moon color.

Isn't that pretty?

The moon had started out as a sort of brightness behind the clouds. I stood out there watching it, camera in hand. In what felt like a thoughtful move from the moon, it rose up out of the clouds as I stood there.

Rising...

Interestingly, the branches in front of the moon look a little transparent. And if you magnify this photo, you might see this light greenish line curving over the top of the moon.

The moon won't be this close to us again until 2034!

If any of you took some pictures of tonight's Super Moon, I'd like to see them! It's possible that the moon looked a little different where you are.

A dark, dramatic sky and a new project

This is last night's moon. Aren't the clouds dramatic? They look painted. This was right after the Strawberry Moon on the 20th. What's neat is that this Strawberry Moon fell on the same date as the summer solstice. I read that this is so rare, that the last time it happened was 1948!

The wind and the clouds were moving fast, which made things even more dramatic.

Eventually, the clouds covered the moon entirely which led to my favorite shot of the night:

Doesn't that look just a bit like a jack-o-lantern face?

To my surprise, my camera zoomed to 80x. I thought it would only go to 39x for some reason, so I was thrilled that it kept going and I got this one:

You can really see those craters on the right side of it.

I had been working on a blog post after a recent trip to the museum, but that isn't entirely done yet. Hopefully it will be soon. I photographed some cool and spooky old African artifacts there, but researching them is taking some time. I'd like to be able to actually tell you guys about them!

Besides researching those artifacts, I also haven't been blogging much because most my online time has been going toward other things like playing around with recording my voice and learning about making videos. It has been my goal for a long time now to do some recordings and get them on YouTube and after a few months of research, I'm finally getting around to figuring this all out!

Anyway, I thought I'd check in with a quicker post than what I'd been planning just to make sure I made an appearance! It's been a long time since I've been blogging and I didn't want to drop off the face of the earth.

I'd like to chat with anyone who has some tips or ideas before I go into doing the recordings/videos. I might have some questions for those of you who already have YouTube channels.

I'm thinking right now of an old time radio theme. Something like the spooky old shows and stories from the 40s that I enjoy listening to. Any suggestions of what you might like to hear?

Happy Halloween! In a dark, nocturnal sort of way...

Happy Halloween everyone! This might be a post worth reading or revisiting at night because I'm going to share some nighttime photos. I took all these pictures of the moon over the course of the last few months. Some of them captured spooky moments for me since I was out alone in the dark and others were taken during fun social nights like The Fourth of July. They all seemed Halloween appropriate to me!

This is one of the more classic Halloween skies I captured. I love those clouds! You can see how they were moving with the wind. There are some interesting things happening with the cloud color too. There's this burnt orange thing going on in places. The moon was so bright that night, it's almost hard for me to look at it in the picture.

Another view:

This was taken behind some tall trees.

I love the silhouette of the leaves.

A closeup of the craters. I love my camera!

I had to learn to stay really still to take these. I was using a 30x zoom and everything wants to shake and blur with that much of a magnification.

Some spooky leafless trees masking the moon! I love that Harvest Moon looking color.

A classic full moon:

I took this one several nights ago.

Between the long zoom and some massive wind, I got this:

Not that I'm saying that the wind was so massive that it blew the moon back and forth... but I don't know what happened. I think it was gusting in front of my camera and moving it. Anyway, I like this.

Here is my Fourth of July shot! Can you see the stars? This was one magical sky. That glow around the edge of the cloud! Wow.

A softer, summer sky:

A few more details on the moon. Isn't it pretty when the sky is still light enough to look blue while the moon is out? That's not something that can be said right now!

Here's another favorite of mine! I have a photo of the moon from this night as my Twitter background. I love that orange. It's so spooky and subtle. I actually used my flash on this one and suddenly the moon looked orange in my photo. It wasn't in real life. This picture screams Halloween to me!

Lastly, a spooky porch shot of the moon peeking around the roof.

I hope we get to see a spooky Halloween moon out tonight!

In keeping with the nighttime theme, I have to share a track from the Philip Glass/Kronos Quartet soundtrack to Dracula. Philip Glass composed this music to accompany the 1931 Dracula film. I ran into the soundtrack accidentally a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. Here's one of my favorite tracks ~ "Dr. Van Helsing and Count Dracula":

It's worth listening to the entire album if you can find it. I actually found it at our local library.

I recorded another Halloween reading for this year. This time I'll be reading you a poem titled The Vampire. It was written by Conrad Aiken. This poem is a little dark, so I thought it would be a perfect fit with my nocturnal photos! As usual, the video is going to stay black while I read.

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