I was teaching my annual photography workshop at the Bosque del Apache a week before the well-attended Crane Festival. I chose that week to avoid the crowds at the festival. Even so, there were lots of other birdwatchers and photographers present at the time of my workshop.

My workshop students and I were excited that the supermoon of November 2016 would rise during the time of the workshop. To prepare an exciting moonrise photograph, we spent a couple of hours doing calculations and planning for the lunar event. I find these calculations fascinating, although when trigonometry appeared, some of the students gave me a look of “what, we are not going to do that, are we?”. As a physicist, I am more excited about explaining some parts of nature with mathematics than most people, I guess. Isn’t it cool to figure out when and where the moon will rise over the subject of your photo, and where you have to set your tripod to see it?

With all the other photographers around at the time, we had to include models of human behavior, especially photographers, into our plans. Too many times, I have done the hard work to plan a photo, only to have other “freeloader” photographers jump into the scene and copycat me. This behavior bothers me, as I consider they are not really “earning” the photos and claims they post on Instagram. Their story is not compelling to me.

To mitigate this challenge, my photography workshop students and I agreed to lay low and not set up tripods until the last moment before the moonrise. We avoided mentioning the word “moon” and attract attention to what we were doing. I covertly set a small rock where we needed to be when the moonrise started.

I noticed a few other photographers hovering close by to our workshop. The refuge is a public treasure, open to all. Professional photographers and workshops have no exclusive rights or access to the refuge. Nevertheless, I was not going to “give away” all the work we did in planning and our creative work, the composition plus details of this photo opportunity.

We chose an iconic tree snag at the Bosque del Apache as our foreground subject in our calculations. The plan was to photograph the supermoon rising over this artistic tree.

With just a couple of minutes before the calculated time, we moved our tripods to the calculated position. As we set up there, three other photographers that were suspiciously watching us earlier, jumped right in front of us. Human behavior is frequently predictable, and in this case, disappointing.

I asked the class to do the right thing, and they then asserted themselves politely and then moved in front of the opportunistic photographers, with polite “excuse me” gestures.

These situations are uncomfortable and can ruin the experience of many. The other photographers could have communicated with us earlier if they had also done their homework like we had and also wanted to capture the same photograph. We would have been able to work out a mutually agreeable plan. Instead, they never said a word to us.

Clouds are often a challenge in moonrise photography. All it takes is a thin cloud layer on the eastern horizon to hide the moon. Clouds to the east looked like they would block our view of the moon. Even so, we waited patiently, hoping we would see the moon. A thin break in the clouds to the east allowed some of the warmly colored supermoon to appear.

Instead of a bald eagle, Great-tailed grackles decorated the snag. They looked like black leaves. It appears that they, too, were watching the supermoon rise?

Pastel-colored autumn trees against the blue evening light set a beautiful stage for the moonrise.

Only so much can be “calculated” in moon photography. Clouds and other unforeseen circumstances add some uncertainty to make it exciting.