2016.01.23 Sat: Around sunset this evening my husband glanced outdoors and exclaimed that the moon was noticeably bright and large ...He was certain that I would want a photo!
I suppose that it was so beautiful at that time because it was almost full, and was low on the horizon. Also, it was beautifully illuminating layers of clouds beneath it.
At any rate, he was correct: I grabbed my camera and went running out into the snow-covered world (immediately realizing that the snow had frozen into ice!) and carefully framed the moon between the trees. In my hurry, I left my camera on its automatic setting.
I admit that I came indoors and - excited to see my results - loaded my pics on the computer ...only to find that in getting the foreground right I had only gotten a mediocre pic of a rather blurry overly-white moon. So I trudged back outdoors, sighed as I did what I should have done in the first place and put my camera on manual setting, and got this much-better pic of the moon; and then blended the two images together by placing the second photo of the moon exactly where it had been in the first pic.
I am pleased with the results as this looks like what I actually saw -- and hopefully will remember to set my camera up more carefully next time!
@eyesmile Thanks, Gena! I used Photoshop CS2 to make this ...but you could use any editing program that lets you work in layers and layer masks. I placed my photo with the "better" moon pic as the bottom layer, and then placed my other pic as a layer over it. Then I just applied a layer mask to "erase" the part where I wanted the moon to show through. I'm sure that you could learn it quite easily :)
So worth your efforts in both going back outside and in post-processing. I love that sweet line of clouds beneath the brilliant moon. Just magical. You created a stunning image, and it's a FAV for me!
