Blood Moon
Hi Everybody,
Once again, apologies for my absence! An infection in my leg has forced me to spend a lot of time off my feet over the last couple of weeks, so photography has been on the back- burner for a while. š¦
I was sorting through some recent images shot before all this happened when I came across this one of the ‘Blood Moon’ that happened a couple of months ago. This particular blood moon happened at moonrise on the full moon, so the moon was very darkĀ for about 20- 30 mins after sunset. By the time I could actually see it, it was nearly dark and this image had a 30s exposure time at is0800, so there was movement in the moon over that period.
In the interests of experimentation, I decided to see if I could perhaps improve the image with a stationary moon.
After cloning out the original moon I dropped in another full moon that I had on file with a red & yellow gradient over the selected moon. After a couple of false starts I finally got the moon to look as close as possible to the original and ended up with this image.
Whitsunday Moonrise
Well, it has been a long 6 weeks of rest & recuperation afterĀ surgery but I am slowly getting out & about more regularly!
This is one of the first images I have shot for ages and is one I have had in my mind for quite a while,but the moon hasn’t been in the right place until last night’s full moon when it all came together at last! There is something magical about the moon rising over the Whitsunday Islands on a balmy tropical evening, reflecting across the water, a sight I never tire of!
All the Best for Christmas & New Year to you all, make it a Happy & SafeĀ one!
Full Moon Rising
This is an image I shot at moonrise last night. I actually saw this image the night before during that brief period when the eastern sky gets a beautiful magenta glow and you can actually see the earth’s shadow.
Couldn’t do much about it at the time as I was on the road, but I returned the next night knowing I would probably need to take a range of images and blend them together to re-create what I had seen the night before.
Remember that the moon rises approx. 50 mins later each night, so I knew that the moon would be too low in the sky during the 10min of Magenta glow.
Following, are the 3 images I took to get to the final image you see above.
The first image was taken to get the best exposure for the foreground, the second image was exposed for the sky, you can see that colour happening in the sky! Notice that the moon hasn’t even appeared yet, now I just need to wait for it and shoot with a 200mm lens.
By the time it is high enough in the sky which is about 20mins later everything else is getting pretty dark but that is ok, all I need is an exposure to get detail in the moon.
After a little work in Lightroom to get each image where I want them, I import the first 2 images into Photoshop where I can exchange the sky in the first image with the darker sky in the second image using a Quick Selection and a Layer Mask
After flattening the image I apply a curves adjustment which as a side effect saturates the sky a little bit more, but I don’t mind that.
Next, I import the moon image and and reduce it’s size by 25% so it fits the image better. Select All, Copy and then Paste it on top of the blended foreground image. Using the Move tool I can then putĀ the moon wherever I like, in this case I put it a little bit higher in the sky to better balance the image
I then change the blend mode of the Moon layer to Screen and voila, the black sky disappears leaving that moon just hanging in the sky about where it was in reality. It is a little bright so I drop the Opacity to about 70% and flatten the image.
This is what Full Moonrise actually looked like.
Shot with a TS-E 24mm.
Steep Island Moonrise
I am just about to see if I can put together a good image of the moon rising over Cedar Ck Falls. As i was sitting there thinking about how to go about it, I was reminded of an image I have of the full moon over Steep Is. in the Kimberley.
This was just an experiment to see how to put together a composite image but it came out so well that I thought I would share it with you all!
The beauty about this image is if you were in the right spot and the moon was in the right spot, this could be real (ish)!
Kimberley Moon
Hi,Sorry I havn’t posted for a while but I have been trying to catch up on a few things! Like sorting and editing all the images from this year’s trip to the Kimberley!
Anyway, I have been playing around with a trial version of Adobe’s Lightroom 2 and I can say that it is a very cool program. Hasn’t got all the bells and whistles of Photoshop but there are some very nice things you can do with your RAW files non-desrtuctively. Like putting a gadient through that washed out sky and voila!
Yes, I think I will be getting a full version of this one.
PS This image lost a bit of ‘pop’ after posting, imagine the hills with a more saturated and brighter yellow tone.
Island Images Photo Blog 