VIDEO: Full moon rise over New Zealand
Photographer Mark Gee explains how he took this incredible footage.
FULL MOON SILHOUETTES IS something that I’ve been wanting to capture for a over a year now. The video is a real time capture of the moon rising over the Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand.
On the evening of the 28 January 2013, after a lot of planning and many failed attempts, I finally managed to pull it off.
There were numerous factors I had to consider to capture the footage: the weather, moon phases, and a suitable location where I could actually get the moon rising directly over the lookout.
I found the right location, and the weather in Wellington was amazing. Luckily there were people watching the moon rise from the Mount Victoria Lookout. I didn’t know what to expect with the performance of everyone up there, but I couldn’t have directed it better myself, even though they had no idea I was filming them.
I shot eight minutes of footage between 9.14pm and 9.22pm and the finished edit shows about the first three minutes of that.
Technically, getting the shot was quite difficult. I was 2.1km away from my subject, and there was no room for error. Thankfully, it all came together, and what I ended up with was this wonderful performance of total strangers silhouetted against the full moon as it rises above the lookout.
Technical details: the footage was shot with a Canon 1D MkIV in video mode, with a Canon EF 500mm f/4 lens and a Canon 2x teleconverter, giving me the equivalent of 1300mm focal length.
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