First Night with the Lunartics

 Never did I think I would have this much fun attempting to shooting the moon. I was reluctant to fork over money to learn how to shoot the moon. It seems easy I've shot the moon before, just never tried to get planes crossing it. It's something Raul Roa founder of the Lunartics has got down to a science. Through experience and a myriad of smartphone apps he has figured out the best places to get planes from LAX  crossing paths with the moon.

I saw the birth of the Lunartics and have followed it's progress through social media. Raul Roa, Nick Ut, and Ringo Chiu are three Los Angeles photographers I have followed for years. Since my love for photography, more specifically photojournalism, started I looked to social media to follow the pros and that's who these three men are. They started shooting the moon together and other news photographers joined in and the Lunatics started.

I always liked their pics and never did I plan on going out with them. But I have always wanted to meet them. Now with seminars being offered, this was my chance.

The night started with me getting there too early but luckily Raul was there just as early to survey the area. I awkwardly spent the night asking questions of my idols and listened in on their conversations about the industry. Just like their solemn conversations about who has been laid off and how pay isn't what it used to be state of the night and the state of photojournalism seemed grim. The sky started off with beautiful clouds before the sky was blanked with a grayish purple and stayed in the sky the rest of the night even after we moved locations.

Equipment wise I was not in the best shape I wanted a teleconverter for my Tamron 200 2.8 but my local camera store had none that would work with my lens and camera set up. Most of the night i used a canon T2i with an old 300 mm lens before i switched to a 5D Mark III to see if the package of high noise and better reach would be better than low noise and less reach when I cropped. Unfortunately with no moon shots I was not able to find out.

I got some cool cloud and sunset photos and that was about it. I was however able to get a pretty  horrible looking, but pretty interesting photo of a plane flying by Venus and Jupiter which was visible that night.

A pretty  horrible looking, but pretty interesting photo of a plane flying by Venus and Jupiter.

 Plane flying through the clouds before sunset.

 A photo of the sunset, looks almost like film. Most likely due to the grain in the photo and this is a very old lens from my dads film camera, it's almost twenty years old.