Shine On Harvest Moon...

Tonight's Harvest Moon won't reach it's full state until 5:27 this A.M. (Monday the 12th), but I wanted to get some photos while the sky was still at full darkness.  Because I have such an erratic sleep schedule that has lately had me napping during the day, I made sure to set my alarm in case I fell into a deeper state of slumber than usual.  It turns out that I did.  I even turned off the alarm when it sounded...while I was still asleep.  Luckily, I woke up only an hour and half later than I planned.  That put me at about 8:30 PM.  After taking a few minutes to re-enter the realm of the living and alert, I grabbed camera and tripod as I headed out the front door.

I couldn't see a thing.  The sky was not quite as dark as other nights, the brighter moon making it's presence known, but...the culprit was a cloud cover that obscured stars and moon like a curtain.  There was a hole here and there that let vestiges of moonlight through, but other than that, nada.  Rather dejectedly I went back inside.  Then I had the thought that it might be hanging out a little north of us beyond all of the trees that blocked my view.  Glenn and I hopped in the truck to go check it out.  We thought it might be visible from the docking area of the gambling boat that travels our neighboring river.  Hopping into the truck, we hardly made it a couple hundred feet from the  parking space when the moon peeked out from behind the clouds.  It was brief, but I now knew that it was completely viewable from the condo...if the clouds would cooperate.  Unfortunately, they didn't.

Not until later...

I was able to get about a dozen shots of the 2011 Harvest Moon before the clouds became a nuisance again.  As a general rule, moon + clouds = great pictures.  I did get some beautiful and eerie photos in before the clouds covered things over again.  Mission accomplished.