Yesterday evening, around 9:30, it was dark outside, but inside the cozy lights were burning. We are in the darkest months of the year again, making people light up candles and other cozy lights. My partner calls Skipper for the last evening round, as he does every evening. While he leashes Skipper, he looks outside for a moment and says in a nonchalant tone: “Full moon.”

Those two words caused an acute shortcircuit in my head. “Shit,” I thought. “I wanted to go out and photograph this supermoon in an interesting place.” That has been a plan for a while already, but somehow I just can’t seem to get around to working out that plan. It’s in my head. I swear! The plan is to make a plan. The way I came up with it, it was actually very logical, only as often happens with plans that I make a plan for the sake of making a plan, it always ends up in the “Later Someday” folder. Not convenient, but it is reality.

So you get it, there goes my plan again, it was 9:30, and although this wouldn't be a strange time to jump in the car and go look for a location that would appeal to me, it works a little differently for me. Now I also have to say that I've been a bit listless and uninspired all week, perhaps also the influence of that supermoon! This week it actually feels a bit like I've gotten stuck in creative quicksand and every attempt to create something is slowly sinking away. Well, long story short, the thought that I now had to rush outside at the last minute, with a complete lack of energy and inspiration, to find that location where I could make that "super record", was quickly shot down.

No Plan, No Photo

The plan, if you want to call it that, had been to come up with a plan. Yes, that sounds just as vague as I felt, and that's exactly where I was at that moment. So just no plan! No location, no composition, and I were almost ready to think, "Whatever, no photo". But when I looked through the window for a moment, I saw, that moon! And it really seemed to be calling me to make that super shot.

Believe me, a supershot was clearly a bridge too far. But shooting a simple picture of the moon, just in the backyard, that's something anyone can do, right? So I grabbed my Nikon P1000 from its spot and decided to go outside anyway.

Nikon P1000 at the ready, zoom lens extended a bit, and fully focused on that moon. The only challenge I had to overcome in my mind was that this really wasn't going to be the super shot of that super moon. In our backyard, there was no way to make anything interesting of it. No beautiful silhouettes, not even special cloud formations. It was just... a moon, against a pitch-black sky. Nothing special. But now that I had come this far, I took a few pictures anyway. If only to not have walked outside for nothing. And believe it or not, after the third click the battery also gave up. So three sad attempts to take a picture, and my camera gave up. The battery was just as empty as my inspiration. How symbolic do you want it to be?

Supermoon is TODAY!

So this morning I'm looking at the three pictures, one of which is at the top of the blog. Open the internet, look at some news articles and suddenly see an article about the possibility of photographing the supermoon on, yes, October 17! Today! Not yesterday, I was just a day too early. I had completely resigned myself to not having taken a super picture of a supermoon, but today it turns out to be THE possibility to take that super picture of that supermoon. I'm already recharging my batteries, now I hope that I can also find a charging point for my inspiration and energy somewhere today. Could it be?