June 29, 2026

Moonrise Over Boston: Chasing an Alignment from Nahant Beach

I woke up at 2:45 AM for this absolute monster of a moon over Boston.  It was taken with a 100-500 mm lens with a 2x extender.  This is one shot with minimal basic adjustments

Why Nahant Beach Works for a Boston Skyline Shot

Nahant is a small peninsula about 14 miles northeast of Boston, connected to the mainland by a narrow sandy causeway, and it’s one of the rare spots on the North Shore with a clear, unobstructed line of sight straight down the coast to the city. Long Beach and Nahant Beach Boulevard, laid out in the early 1900s by the landscape firm that grew out of Frederick Law Olmsted’s practice, offer miles of open sightline over the water toward the Prudential Center and the rest of the downtown skyline, with nothing but Massachusetts Bay in between. That combination of distance, elevation, and open horizon is exactly what makes it possible to line up a rising moon directly behind Boston’s tallest buildings, especially with a long enough lens to compress the scene and make the moon loom large over the skyline instead of shrinking into the background.