Leon Turnbull Photography

Friday night was a full moon, so I came up with an idea to take a drive up to Lake Tahoe to see the moon rise over Emerald Bay. Good idea, I thought.

I drove up right after work on Friday. It was a long weekend, and there would be lots of people going up to Tahoe for the weekend. The traffic was heavy as suspected, but I made it up there in decent time, had dinner, then drove over to Emerald Bay. I was hoping to maybe get some sunset shots overlooking the Bay first, but there wasn’t much in the way of clouds. There were a few at first, but they disappeared by sunset time.

I had some time so I went up to Upper Eagle Falls first. The creek flow was incredibly low. That should not be surprising but I was hoping for a little more flow in the creek. It wasn’t really worth photographing, but I climbed over to the brink of the falls and took some shots anyway. Then I went over to Lower Eagle Falls and waited around for sunset. I did not bother to get my camera out there, though I was hoping the few clouds on the horizon might show a bit of color. They did not. Still, it was pleasant and peaceful to sit there with no one else around. After awhile, some Japanese tourists came by, disturbing my peace, so I got up and left. I didn’t want to take any photos anyway.

I thought I had a full hour before the moon would rise, so I decided to take a short drive up the road to see what I could see. But after a few minutes of driving, I noticed the moon rising over the lake! What?? It was not supposed to rise for another hour, and it was also rising from the wrong direction! After I got home, I realized I had been looking at the moon rise for the wrong date (dumb!), so that’s why I thought it would be rising later than it did. Anyway, I drove back to Emerald Bay, and climbed down on the rocks to setup and take photos of the moon rising over the bay. There was a big boat driving around the Bay (the Tahoe Queen?), and I could hear them partying on the boat from way up where I was. You can see the lights from the boat in this photo.

This shot was a 120 second exposure at f/8. I was not very pleased with any of my shots this night. I seemed to under expose most of them. They seem a lot brighter on the LCD screen of my camera, so I thought they were okay, but back on my computer screen at home, they are darker. Oh well, live and learn. I’m going to have to go back some day and try this again. Maybe next time, I’ll have some clouds too.