July supermoon in San Francisco
This year’s “supermoon” was on Saturday, July 12. A supermoon is when the Moon’s orbit brings it closer to the Earth (at the perigee) and make it appear larger (especially when it’s full moon and at moon rise). In San Francisco, any summer full moon is a challenging situation to photograph. The summer fog can play troublemaker and block any moon rise. My plan for that supermoon rise was to take a picture of the Moon sitting on top of the Coit Tower. Saturday night was a typical summer evening in San Francisco, cool, windy and with the fog rolling in. As I was waiting for the Moon to rise I took a couple images to show you the fog rolling in over the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands. The East Bay was still visible and I...
Burma/Myanmar – Shwedagon pagoda
In January, I traveled to Myanmar (also known as Burma) for a 12-day trip. Myanmar is a controversial country and while travel is extremely safe and pleasant, the country’s image still suffers from bad reputation. But Burma is the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. It’s the second largest country by landmass in Southeast Asia and one of the least visited. In 2013, a little over 2 millions tourists went to Myanmar, compared to 26 millions that went to Thailand. The Myanmar government is trying to encourage tourism and the number of tourists is increasing drastically. The year before, in 2012, only one million tourists went to Myanmar. Knowing this, I was very interested in visiting Myanmar sooner rather than later. The trip was organized by Insider...
The November full moon in San Francisco
The full moon this month was going to rise right above Alcatraz and then set above the south tower of the Golden Gate bridge. It meant waking up before 5am to catch the moon setting and then later that day going back to San Francisco to photograph the moon rising above Alcatraz around sunset time. The moon is exactly aligned with the top of the tower only for a very quick instant. I did my best to “guestimate” where I should be (which means a bit of running with a 400mm lens, a heavy tripod and camera). While I was doing my “guestimation”, clouds were blocking the moon on and off. At the last minute, literally, the clouds opened up, I took three shots and the moon was gone for ever behind clouds. Here are two of those shots: That same...