Obsession Part 2: Sunset and moonrise and storm clouds, oh my!

My second interesting weather experience was last summer when we went out to chase a super moon for pictures. It had been a typically gorgeous New Mexico day - warm, dry, and with a brilliant blue sky. I had checked the almanac and found it to be perfect too. Sunset at 7:30, moon rise at 7:20, and it would take about 20 minutes for the moon to clear the mountains. Just what I wanted, enough light to get details in the foreground and the moon over the mountain peaks.

I left around 5 pm to travel about 30 minutes to a place where I wanted to shoot, up close to the mountains but as I went out the door, there was trouble. Clouds, clouds everywhere! To the west to block the sunset, to the east to block the moon rise. I continued anyway, hoping that maybe I would be lucky and it would clear but this was not in the cards that night. What was in the cards however were some pretty dramatic cloud formations and colors in the sky. This was what I ended up shooting.

I am including both a color and B&W image of several things taken that night. The reason for this will become apparent in the next few weeks as I am working on a special blog post. Perhaps in 2-3 weeks, you can see that too…