The Moment

Photojournalism is most often quick and spontaneous. Art photography, although more often planned or sometimes a waiting game, can be just as fleeting. This post shows how even on the artsy end of photography one must sometimes be fast.

Mark McAdams is an outdoor enthusiast, a photographer and my dentist. He stepped outside his home near Brock, Texas one evening last January and saw the moon chasing the sun into the horizon. The sun had just set with a blaze of color and the small moon was fast to follow.

“It was cold and clear outside and somehow that makes everything clearer and brighter,” Mark described. The sun was putting on a brilliant show behind the Earth and a quarter moon was falling into the colors. He immediately took the shot.

Had he taken the shot five minutes earlier, the setting sun would be higher and drown out the moon. Had he waiting five minutes for the moon to get closer to the horizon the show would be over. He got this impressive picture:

On the other hand, there is failure:

Tuesday night I was leaving a church in Fort Worth and looked up to see a beautiful full moon on the rise over the building. To my delight, I could align the moon glowing directly behind the steeple.

I quickly popped my large lens onto my camera as I pictured in my mind this amazing shot I was about to get. But the camera would not focus. I checked the camera settings and lens settings while fumbling in the dark. I finally took the lens off, laid all my equipment on the hood and examined the lens with a flashlight.

I corrected the problem and aimed to take the shot but it was gone. The moon had risen too far so I put my camera in the back seat and drove home a little disappointed in myself.