I see the moon and the moon sees me...

While many of you won't agree, Sunday was, to me, the most beautiful summer's day ever. It was baking hot (I heard it was as hot as 38 deg C) and there was not a breath of wind in the air. We swam and ate ice-creams and spent the entire day outdoors. We had pizzas for dinner on our patio and enjoyed a couple of glasses of chilled Buitenverwachting Sauvignon Blanc (it was divine). At 7pm, Jake was miles away from sleep and it was just too hot for him. We'd also managed to have an afternoon nap, a rarity in my life. So, I allowed him to stay up until just after 8 and we had a fabulous evening together. The moon came up and we all just relaxed together. Normally there's someone rushing somewhere, but for a change, we all stopped.

The moon was perfectly positioned from our stoep (I could sit on my butt in my chair, with my wine and see it perfectly), so I got my tripod out and Jake & I took a couple of snaps. Jake loves taking photos and he's pretty good at it too. I helped him get the camera set up on the tripod and zoomed in on the moon, while Jake clicked the shutter button for me. A joint effort. Needless to say, even with my 100 - 300mm lens, the moon is still very far away. Zooming in on the moon was quite impressive, but since the shutter was open for such a long time, there's a bit of a haze around the moon and I was a little disappointed with the results.

The first three photos are as they were taken from the stoep...

I like the way you can see the shaded part of the moon in this second photo...

It's a little later and a little darker here and the shaded part of the moon is very clearly visible in the photo, although it wasn't to the naked eye. And note how uneven the divide is between lit and unlit...

With Photoshop, I zoomed in and cropped the moon to get the below image. In my highly unprofessional opinion, it's not that great. I do like how you can see the markings on the moon though...

The moon looks a little better when not cropped quite so much...

After Jake had gone to bed, I carried on playing around and took this photo, I put my camera onto auto, used the flash and whalaa..

Again, I'm not sure why cos I did have my tripod, but when you zoom in close, it's still very slightly blurred. This is, anyway, my favourite photo (cropped from the above in Photoshop) of the night. There's room for improvement, I know, but I love the moon and had lots of fun...