Full Moon

by Moazam
(Middle East)

Freaky Sight

It was a full moon night and I wanted to create a freaky photo on that night.

Photographing the moon is notoriously difficult.

The problem arises because, although it's dark and all our senses are telling us it's dark, the moon itself is actually quite bright.

This means that to get the moon properly exposed, everything else in the photograph ends up being underexposed.

And if you don't get the moon properly exposed you end up with a circular white blob in your photo, rather than the moon in all its craggy-crater glory!

Unfortunately, this is what has happened here. The moon looks just like a big blob of white.

There is a way around this, and the easiest way to do it is by using software. First you take your photo of the moon – and a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second will probably be slow enough (you could try going down to 1/60th but this will normally overexpose the moon).

You then take your photo of the night time scenery. When you get back home, combine the two photos. You can either cut out the moon, and paste it onto your night time photo.

Or, if the sky is black surrounding the moon, just paste the whole image into your night time scene, and change the "blend mode" to "screen".

Overlooking our moon for a moment, what is good about this photo it the angle. Moazam has tried something different here, and all credit to him for trying this.

He's taken a low shot, capturing some blades of grass – adding something to what would otherwise just have been the moon.

Ed.

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• Read more about understanding exposure.