June 2022 Strawberry Supermoon

Strawberry Supermoon from the Huntley Meadows Park boardwalk on June 15, 2022. Many places online were discussing the full moon this month being a supermoon due to it being in its closest point to earth. Bringing up Stellarium to track the moon from dusk until dawn, I saw it was not going to be higher in the sky until around 1 AM. My intention was to also be up at 4 AM for a Huntley Meadows trip the following morning so my plans to photograph it were minimal. Upon going outside around 10 PM on June 14, the moon looked fantastic and had a yellowish glow. We had some cloud cover in the area so my shots were reasonable - not great, not terrible.

The moon was still large and bright when I left home at 4:40 AM. My camera was already packed for the drive in my backpack and unpacking seemed like a hassle, despite how great it looked. The hope was to get to Huntley in time to photograph it before the sun was too high to capture it. The moon was visible nearly the entire ride down 95 and 495. While crossing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into Virginia, my thoughts were how interesting shots would look from the National Mall. Hitting red on nearly every light down rt. 1 made me irritable that the moon would either be below the horizon or have too much light on it by the time I arrived. Fortunately, I had plenty of time before the sun came over the tree line. It was less dramatic and rather dull once the sun came up - it was just another ordinary daytime moon at that point.

I'm not a large fan of photographing the moon when it's full. The non-full moon phases give more detail in the craters due to shadows and I'm of the opinion that alone makes for better moon photographs.

Lens - Tamron 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 @ 600mm on Nikon D500