If it’s a once-in-a-lifetime photo opp, let’s make it memorable, I kept saying to myself. Those words guided me along the east rim of the Cuyahoga Valley, in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, last night.
The target was the rare happening of a waning crescent moon imaged during the elusive blue hour. The blue hour is that fleeting few minutes when the sun has set 4 to 6 degrees below the horizon. Sometimes blue hour lasts as long as 20 minutes. I was ready. I knew the sun would set at 5:11, followed by the moon, setting along the same ecliptic a few minutes behind. At best I had an 11 minute window. Using the PhotoPills app I pinpointed precisely where I had to be, and when.
I was packing enough photo gear to open a small camera store as I worked through the grass and shrubs along a deer trail. Using the app I arrived at my chosen spot and experienced a slight bit of vertigo when I looked down into the valley, the Cuyahoga river flowing to the north, shining in the last of the sun’s light. Perfect.
Well, not exactly. What all the technology that led me to this spot did not indicate were trees. Lots of trees. Beautiful trees blocking the west rim of the valley, cutting off any attempt to image that crescent moon.
Oh well, maybe in my next life I’ll have the opportunity again. Meanwhile, since I was there and prepared, I watched deer moving along the valley floor. Plus, there was the opportunity to photograph the final days of another fall.
