Each moon is named after the title given to it by civilizations from around the world.
Each moon is named after the title given to it by civilizations from around the world.
Isa Turan is a man of many moons.
The amateur photographer and drone pilot has images of 12 full moons he captured at regular intervals throughout the year, in tribute to their names.
Full moons were often given specific names in many ancient civilizations. They often reflect the changing of the seasons. January’s full moon is called the Wolf Moon, referring to wolves that used to howl at night during the month, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. However, the origin of the name is unclear.
February’s Snow Moon got its name from Native American tribes in the northeastern United States because of the heavy snowfall there, according to the Maine Farmer’s Almanac.
Farmer’s Almanacs in the United States for years have been the resource for citing moon names and their origins.
Turan’s interest in shooting each month’s full moon began when he realized no one seems to have done it in the way he envisioned.
“To be honest, I didn’t know that there was so much interest in the full moon until I made a project out of it,” Turan said.
“Photographs of the full moon are taken all the time, but there was no one who had taken the full moon according to its name every month, and I decided to turn it into a project.”
Turan talked about some of the technical hurdles to photographing the moon.
“To shoot the full moon alone, you need a good camera that can zoom. If you are going to shoot an object in front of the moon, you need to have manual exposure knowledge for this,” he said. “It is very difficult to focus on both the full moon and the subject at the same time. Generally, the success rate is higher in photos taken during the day due to the light.”
He said that there are also various tricks that can be employed to overcome technical difficulties: “Double exposure technique can be used because it is difficult to focus on the full moon and the object at the same time at night. Before changing the frame, a photograph is taken with the full moon in focus, then a photograph is taken with the object in focus, and both photographs are combined.”
Turan said he got interested in photography when he borrowed a friend’s Nikon P900 camera, and how that led to his project.
“I took photos for a few months. Then I discovered a website showing the moonrise and sunset. I read on the website how the moon was named in the past, and it impressed me a lot. People used to use nature and sky as clocks and calendars. So I decided to shoot the full moon for a year according to its name.”
The other ancient names of the moon are: March: Worm Moon; April: Pink Moon; May: Flower Moon; June: Strawberry Moon; July: Buck Moon; August: Sturgeon Moon; September: Harvest Moon; October: Hunter’s Moon; November: Beaver Moon; December: Cold Moon.
Turan said his next project will be to film at least 10 hours of time-lapse videos of ancient cities and historical lighthouses in Turkey, under the Milky Way, “all night long.”
