Moonrise Over Doha

The story of this photograph is one of exploration and adventure.

This began as many good photographs begin with an idea. A vision. The moon rising above the dramatic towers of Doha's new buildings. I knew I wanted a full moon. This would also ensure that the sun was setting at the same time, hopefully giving me a usable sky. As a man with a family and a day job, however, sunset is almost never a time of day when I am without responsibilities. The idea was on back burner.

As a photographer, I keep a weather eye on the upcoming moon phases. It did not escape my notice that an upcoming full moon was going to land on a weekend day. Of course there is no telling what a sky will be like until the sun actually starts to set but I took a chance on planning an outing to catch the moonrise and my son, Aaron, decided to come along as well. We set out in my old American muscle car full of hope and adventure.

Our first challenge on setting out was to find a good vantage point. I have several places that I favour for good views of the Doha skyline but none of them are from due west of the city. To have the moon rising over the city I would need to be due west because the moon would rise in the east. As the sun set lower in the sky we were able to start fine tuning our direction by using the lengthening shadows. We knew that a full moon is opposite the sun so that the shadows from the setting sun will point in the direction that the full moon will rise from. Using this information we started racing around areas west of the city, the V8 bellowing, looking for a place with a decent vantage that would view the city from the necessary angle.

By the time we found a hopeful looking spot we had already tried and ruled out a few others. The sun was already set as we scrambled over the deserted construction site to try to locate a decent place to set up. Photographing in the middle east is not the same as in my home country and we hoped that no one would think we were trying to photograph their homes or engaging in espionage.

The area we had found was a bare low hilltop that had been cleared for a construction project but not yet built on. It was covered with regular mounds of gravel and sand that were each the result of a single dump truck unloading. It made an interesting foreground that was both regular and irregular. However, I was still uncertain if the sky was going to do anything worthwhile and the moon was already rising high enough that it was going to be hard to get the moon and buildings into the same tight shot, which had been my original vision.

Part of getting a good photograph outdoors, however, is rolling with what you are presented with. I started thinking of a different shot, one that would encompass the whole skyline in a wider angle shot. The difficulty with a long narrow target such as the skyline of a city from a vantage such as this is keeping enough interest in the picture area. I found that a little of the foreground rubble was interesting but I was getting such a wide expanse of it that it was fairly monotonous. I started looking at nearby mounds and then I saw the tyre.

When I saw the tyre I knew how it had to be. The tyre would anchor the picture. As I took the picture I knew I had something. Since I shot it on Fuji Velvia slide film it would be some time before I saw it but my past experience with this film assured me that it would do magic with the light and deal gracefully with the extremes of lighting between the full moon and the shaded rubbish pile.

Driving back with Aaron was great. I was worried that he would have been bored but he said he had a great time. As I was working on this shot Aaron was working on another which turned out to be crazily creative and brilliant. It was truly a good day out.

And we each got our shot.