Full Moon 1

It's cloudy and cool here tonight. I went out at sunset to photograph the rising moon, forgetting that the actual night of the full moon is tomorrow.



It was cloudy at sunset. Later, though, there was a brief gap in the clouds. I went out into the front yard with the tripod and made a few images.

The clouds were moving very fast on high, and there was a breeze on the ground, too. So the clouds are blurred by motion, and in the shot with the tree the leaves are blurred as well because of motion. Embrace the blur!



Settings: Manual focus set on infinity. ASA 400. f3.5 or f.40. 0.6 second exposure. Tried a couple of 1.0 second exposures, but they were too washed out. Shorter is better to get definition in the image of the moon's face. I did have to increase contrast slightly using Levels in Photoshop. Didn’t change the settings, just moved the sliders enough to increase the contrast.

I hope that it’s clear tomorrow, so that I can make clear moonrise images.



Meanwhile, it was a dark and stormy night, moody, gothic, where the werewolves are lurking, howling at the moon. It's a theory.

A note on composition: When I’m making images like this, the last thing I do is center the moon in the frame. I think that off-center composition is more interesting. I admit to being influenced in this instance by design concepts from ancient Japanese design. I almost always think of a few enameled writing box covers I’ve seen in museums.