In mid-July I related some thoughts and gave some hints on photographing the moon, given the upcoming blue moon. I commented that I mainly photograph the moon opportunistically. That is, I almost never go out to try to get a photo with the moon in it. If I am photographing something else and the moon cooperates, I’ll take advantage of the opportunity. But last weekend, which I spend on Lake Sunapee, was different. I intentionally shot the moon and tried to put into practice some of the photographic suggestions I made. If you haven’t read the previous post you can find it HERE.
August 31, 2012 featured a blue moon. Specifically this was the second full moon in August, which is one of the two types (definitions) of a blue moon as described in the earlier piece.
In the previous post I suggested that the night of a full moon might not be the best time to photograph it if your intent is to both show detail in the moon and have a foreground that is lighter than a silhouette. I suggested: “To photograph a landscape to the west, it is best to shoot the day after the full moon at sunrise. To photograph a landscape to the east, plan your shot for the day before the full moon at sunset. At these times the moon will rise or set as the sun sets or rises, and you can get an exposure for the landscape that is close to the right exposure for the moon. And there will be some color in the sky which is normally a plus.”
The photo at the left was taken August 28, 2012, around 8 pm, three nights before the full moon. It was quite dark; this was an 8 second exposure at ISO 400 and f/13. So I got an adequate exposure for the lake and cabin, but no detail in the moon.
One day later, still two evenings before the full moon, the situation was much better. The photo at the right was taken around 6:30 pm, August 29. The both the sun and moon are in the sky together and the moon almost looks full. Fifteen minutes later the same evening I made the photo below.
Continuing with the “evenings before a full moon in the east” I took the two photos below the day before the full moon at around 7:30 pm less than 2 minutes apart. The eastern sky has color at sunset, there is sufficient light on the scene, and there is detail in a moon that certainly looks full, though it was not actually full yet.
Finally the full moon. The photo below was taken at 6 am the morning of the full moon. The sun hadn’t yet risen; the foreground is lit only by the early sky. Below this photo is a slide show of some photos shot the mornings of August 31 and September 1, 2012.
Normally the best time to photograph a full moon setting in the west in the early morning is the day after the full moon. The moon will appear full and there will be enough light on the foreground to balance the bright moon so you can see detail in both the moon and the ground. The three photos below were all taken the morning of September 1, 2012, the day after the full blue moon.
The top photo on the left below was taken around shortly before sunrise. The second photo on the left was made about 30 minutes after sunrise. The photo on the right was taken 5 minutes after that. Although the images here are small and it is hard to tell, there is detail in the moon in all three photos.
The following image of the moon was taken August 30, 2012, but that isn’t the key element here. How did I create this image? For those of you who understand Photoshop, a quick summary of the steps involved follows the image.
The above image is a composite of three photos of the moon, each shot with a shutter speed of 2.5 seconds. In each case I moved the camera randomly during the exposure. I combined the three in Photoshop using the Lighten Color Blending Mode. I created a fourth layer of the result (“stamp visible”) and slightly transformed that layer to fill the frame a bit better. Minor adjustment layers followed. Perhaps I could have gotten something similar with a lower ISO and one 10 second exposure and avoided using PS, but this is what I did. I was just playing, I just took 4 photos like this, and after the fact when I saw what resulted I combined three of them.
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