Thoughtful Thursday on Saturday: Moon Shots

 [Peregrine Falcon, moon, and Cape May Lighthouse, August 28, 2010. Cape May, New Jersey. Click to enlarge all photos.]

Shooting for the moon is a tricky business, whether with a camera or metaphorically. The term originates in space exploration and migrated to sports, specifically baseball, for a ball hit far, high, deep, and often out of the park for a home run. Often, but not always. So it is with moonshots, in baseball and in life.

The last full moon of the 20-teens was Thursday, December 12, 2019 [I use a free iOS app called "moon phase calendar plus" - there are about a bazillion other app options.]
Above and below are four of my favorite 20-teen moons.

Moonshot -

"A moonshot, in a metaphorical sense, is an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near term profitability or benefit and also, perhaps, without full investigation of potential risks and benefits. The term derives from the Apollo 11 space flight project, which landed the first human on the moon in 1969."

- Margaret Rouse, WhatIs.com , April 28, 2014

[Waning crescent moon, Cape May, NJ, October 13, 2012. Taken from the hawk watch platform during the annual Big Sit.]

 [Rising full moon over the Kittatinny Ridge, High Point State Park, Sussex, NJ, July, 2014. God's country. This ridge, about 1800' ASL here, continues southwest past the Delaware Water Gap as Pennsylvania's Blue Ridge.]

 

[Red-winged Blackbird in front of rising full moon, February, Nummy Island, NJ. Since Kevin Karlson, one of the greatest of the great bird photographers and who ought to know better, told me this was the best Red-winged Blackbird photo he'd ever seen, I reckon you deserve some explaining. Not about camera lens, aperture, shutter, ISO, etc., although there was plenty of technical mumbo jumbo going on long before the shutter was pressed. I set out that evening hoping to take one good picture, which I sometimes try to do but seldom achieve. I'm just a birdwatcher who also likes to take pictures sometimes. I saw the shot coming an hour before it did, and spent 30 minutes watching where this one stud male perched to sing. 30 minutes before the shot I figured out exactly which branch I wanted him on, selected the spot I would shoot from, and got him used to me being there so he soon ignored me. 10 minutes out I finalized the mumbo jumbo and waited for the bird and the moon to speak to each other. It is cold on Nummy Island in February. At 5:49 p.m. they were talking and I took one 10 shot burst and ran to the truck]