Statue of Liberty, pre-dawn 1/13/25  

   To follow up on last month’s Story Behind Every Photograph comes the fruition of the full moon over the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour as detailed in the Photo Pills app. The PhotoPills website is linked in blue. The YouTube channel by a photographer from Vermont with step by step scenarios detailing the power of the app is linked here in blue YouTube. 

   The plan began to take shape when I reached out to a good friend who lives in the greater NYC area. Monty has a demanding job and travels a lot, in fact following the Monday morning January 13th full moon he was off to Paris on Thursday night.  My intention was to leave home around 3 am and arrive at the Louis Valentino pier around 5:30 am well before the 6:45 – 7am window for the full moon coming into view. Monty reached out and said he booked two rooms at a Brooklyn Marriott property with his travel points, the hotel is a short 15 minutes for the Valentino pier, a near perfect scenario was taking shape. It seemed the only wildcard to the plan was the weather and clear skies.

   Monty and his wife would enjoy a Sunday day-date in NYC and he and I would meet the next morning @ 5am. The overnight in NYC would allow me to spend the entire Sunday in NYC exploring and making imagery of new and interesting places. This story will be much more visual as I will share the images I made in less than a 24 hour period Sunday morning January 12th.

  While the Full Moon image is more compositionaly in-line with my structure of a photograph, rather than a static moon sitting directly on top of Liberty, or the torch, the image itself doesn’t really excite. Piecing a plan together with a good friend was the far greater reward.  The image is a single shot so the moon and its relationship to Liberty is true to life, because of the dark skies required an enormous amount of shadow recovery in post processing to allow for a fast enough shutter speed so the moon is not blurred.  Photo was taken at f8 @ 125th of second with the sun well below the horizon. I believe that shadow recovery lead to the kinda of chunky transition of tone between the moon and surrounding black sky. More experience and better technique likely would improve the image. Of note, the reason the moon has a distinct yellow cast is due to the atmosphere and moisture content as it gets closer to the horizon. It was difficult to tell that cold morning, there was a heavy cloud bank just below the full moon, that would obscure the bright moon completely as it dropped to the horizon. That cloud bank would eliminate my hope for the perfect selfie of the two adventurers once the moon dropped to a point of no photographic interest. Nevertheless, as the PhotoPills app indicated, at the time of my exposure, about 6:50 am the moon would be 75 feet wide while Liberty at it’s waist is only 35 feet in dimension. Simply amazing the information the PhotoPills app contains, @ $10.00 BTW !

    The sequential visual story beginning the morning of January 12th as I left CT and into the 13th follows below. As an FYI, I’ve included image from that morning, Monty is a terrific photographer with a more graphic sense of color and relationships. I look forward to learning his approach to color harmony. Monty’s amazing Lady Liberty rendering is seen full size just prior to my images from those 24 hours leading up to our “Morning with Lady Liberty”. 

Monty’s Amazing Morning with Lady Liberty

Deep River Morning Light

Ice Detail, Deep River, CT

DUMBO

Bridge Abstract

Graffiti from Manhattan Bridge

Manhattan Bridge Detail

Afternoon, Lady Liberty

Sunset, NYC Harbor

1st Light, Lady Liberty

Lady Liberty, Full Moon

My Walk Across the Manhattan Bridge