The Light of the Moon

On our last evening at Buckskin Mountain State Park in Arizona this apparently full moon rose in a clear sky. The Internet said the “Wolf Moon” which is the first full moon of the new year was on January 12th, the day after these pictures. This looked like a full moon to us. Regardless of the full moon timing we decided to take a few pictures. In this first image we just let the camera shoot away. There is some level of detail in the pine tree to the right and the rock mountain on the center and left hand side. The moon is just an orb of light with no definition.

In this second image we changed the camera settings to reduce the amount of light that the camera thought was coming from the moon. I do not have the ability to adjust the light from the moon only what the camera thinks it sees. We have lost some definition in the pine tree and rock mountain but the camera picked up some detail in the moon.

In this third image we have zoomed the camera into focus more on the moon hence the pine tree looses most of it’s definition, the rock mountain has gone away and is not seen at all but we get a lot more detail in the moon. We also made further adjustments in the light settings to get a little different color hue in the moon.

In this fourth image we zoomed the camera into just the moon. No tree and no mountain. Does the picture of the moon stand alone really well as a decent photograph or does it require something else in the image to provide perspective?

The moon continued to rise and so we could get some of the pine tree involved. Here I tried to focus in on the moon and got some detail there but the pine tree limbs are just a blur. Continuing to play with the light the moon became more of a silver circle as it really appeared to our naked eye.

In this last image we focused on the pine tree and got some definition in the pine needles. Because the tree is a lot darker than the moon and we played some with the camera settings, we got a whitish color moon. There is some definition in the moon but nothing much of detail.
Some would think this a little more interesting image than the moon by itself. Which one is ‘The Best” image is really a matter of choice and maybe there are no “Best”.
This little exercise just shows how you can change the image by recomposing the picture and playing with the light. This was a fun exercise and certainly much more practice and experimentation is needed.

This appears to have been a good start on Playing with the Light from the Moon.