Full Moon Rising

Getting shots of a full moon seems to be a popular pastime with us hobbyist photographers. Turns out it's harder than you think, and can be pretty darn frustrating! The dilemma is you can either expose for the moon, which is so bright that everything else in the photo will be black. Option two is to expose for the foreground, but then you lose all detail of the moon. Here's an example of last weekend's full moon where I exposed for the foreground. See how the moon has no detail? It was actually a really beautiful moon between the tree branches, but I've lost all that detail because of my exposure settings.

Shots where you focus precisely on the moon (spot focus mode) give you great moon definition, but nothing else!! The foreground totally disappears into blackness.

Of course, one solution is photo editing. You can try to lighten the foreground and darken the moon. Even better is layering two photos on top of each other, one exposed for the moon and the second exposed for the foreground. Since the camera is on a tripod, the layers should line up perfectly. Still another option is, instead of layering, just "copy and paste" the moon from your photo that has the proper moon exposure to the photo with the foreground exposure. I used this technique for the two photos below. This young couple strolled out of the Summit House Restaurant in Fullerton to admire the full moon rising on the horizon. I was in the process of taking a moon shot, so I left my camera in place and made multiple exposures.

Ditto for this shot using my new fisheye lens. You can see the detail of both the fountain and the beautiful full moon, which is pretty much what your eye is seeing when you take the photo!

So when you see shots with both good moon detail and foreground detail, you know there must have been some post-processing magic going on! Linking up with Skywatch Friday. Click on the link to check out really great skies from around the world!