Supermoon - Kauai Style

While Rachyl was driving us to the airport for our flight to paradise she mentioned that there was going to be a "super moon" Saturday night. For any of you who don't know what that term means, it's that the moon is at it's closest - and therefore its largest - point in its revolutions around the earth. 

So I immediately started putting together a plan of attack.  I wanted to take advantage of that seldom phenomenon and get some really cool full moon shots.

Easier said than done.

I wanted stuff in the foreground and I wanted it over the ocean.  So in our travels to and from stores and such we started looking - where to go?  We decided on Kealia beach.  It's close, there's always lots of waves and there's all kinds of stuff to put in the foreground, trees, shelters, a lifeguard shack, etc.  The moon was going to be rising right above it, not far off in one direction or the other.

So we headed out around 6:40 for the 7:08 moonrise and Rick turned on his phone to the app that gives you the times of sun and moon rises, zeniths and settings, and lots of other useless info.  It actually, at that point, had a countdown to the moonrise running! 35 minutes to go!

We had a little time to kill so we headed on into Kapaa to pick up more beer for our third (and hopefully final) day of hanging drywall on the ceiling (it's looking pretty nice!)  Then when we headed back to the beach people were already lining up for the big show.  Apparently we weren't the only ones who knew about the supermoon show.  Why did you tell all those people, Rach?

We picked our spot and set up our gear and waited.  There were clouds on the horizon so we didn't actually get to see it until it was a bit above the ocean.  But once it started to come out it was fantastic!  Rick sat in his spot while I ran up and down the parking area taking pictures here and there with my new camera on a spindly tripod.  There was a breeze (in Hawaii?  hoodathunk?) and the tripod shivered in lots of my pictures.  The trees, of course, were also moving and the shots had to be of long duration so the movement became blur.

Overall, though, I ended up getting some nice stuff.  I won't win any awards with them but I like them...