Wow, two separate posts from Stovepipe in Death Valley. I happened to be there when you get that rare lighting condition with a full moon setting right at dawn. Unfortunately, it was not quite perfect and for anybody that takes these moon shots, the dilemma is always how to expose for very low light and not blow out the moon. Well to answer the question before it is asked, yes this moon was dropped in. However, it is the same moon that was shining then. What I did was to take the shot twice, exposing for the scene and then for the moon. Then in a sort of extreme HDR, I dropped the properly exposed moon into the properly exposed scene. This was about the best I could do.

This is a nice composition, George. The leading line just happens to go to the moon (Oh, wait, you dropped that in!). Good work. I expect you have a few more?

George,
love the composition but, to be honest, I'd lighten the moon a bit just to make it look more natural. Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth. The lighting on the landscape is lovely (boy, is that alliterative!).

Jim

Looks natural to me, who is going to know if you dropped the moon in or not unless you tell them? (well, maybe another photographer). DAve

George,

Nice shot. That is such a magical time - full moon setting at sunset, and I really like the way you captured it.

I had a similar challenge with exposure on the shot below. What I did here was to use an offshoot of Roman's HDR technique off the same exposure. I brought two versions of the same RAW file into different layers in PS and used a brush to mask out the moon. I thought about dropping a moon in from a different shot, but this seemed to work ok.



Anyway - nice shot of death valley! I need to go there some time.

Dave and George

Both very nice shots. I had taken some time off photography and just recently came back. I had done some digital but nothing serious, i did most of my serious work in medium format film.

I find it amazing how digital photography is evolving where our own creativity is pretty much the only limitation we have.

Thanks for sharing

Jim,
like everything else, digital can be overdone but the type of thing that both George and Dave have done is to use digital processing to capture the "vision" they had when they took the original shot. Sometimes the camera can't have the same "cerebral dynamic range" that the brain has.

Roman Johnston does similar things with his HDR approach to landscapes. He manages to pull the detail out of the highlights and shadows that you could never do with film. And his HDR approach is very well-managed. Some folks over-do it and the images look unnatural. But these guys use it in moderation and what you see tends to match the minds eye.

Welcome back to photography. You're going to enjoy digital. If you ever need any advice, there are lots of folks here who are very good and very willing to share.

Jim