Last night's full moon

[Diane Miller]

Not quite Halloween yet, but the full moonrise last night was wonderfully colored -- thanks to the unfortunate circumstance of some smoke in the air from fires somewhere. I went out to try to find a good location to shoot it as it came up. Found these redwoods, but The Photographer's Ephemeris said it would miss them by a little. Not to be daunted, I moved it a little. (Not too far, though...)

I didn't want to go too far OOTB with it, to spoil all my careful chicanery, but came up with this Glamour Glow treatment that seemed to work. (Would have been easy if the blue was part of the moon layer, but it was part of the tree layer, which confounded me mightily. Actually had to resort to a cutout, which is basically condescension. Maybe I overlooked something, though...)

Trees were basic, moon was 600mm + 1.4X on a crop sensor, and not sharp due to air pollution and thermal stirring after a hot day. But the color is darn close to how it looked . Probably only a little exaggerated. One of my pet peeves is "But that's HOW IT LOOKED!" (After smoking what?)

[Hazel Grant]

No need to apologize for your steps....it is OOTB after all. Nicely done. And October's not that far off. At first I thought maybe do away with the smaller trees, but then decided that they ground the whole thing. Given the smokey skies that I saw out there in Redding recently, I"m surprised the moon was even that sharp. The intense sky balances it all nicely

[Mitch Carucci]

Very Natural looking Dramatic!

[Kerry Perkins]

Love that big old moon up there, commanding attention in the evening sky. I like the look you achieved, works for me!

[Diane Miller]

Thanks, everyone! "Thick" air can really spoil sharpness. The smoke wasn't nearly as heavy as it would have been in Redding when Hazel was there, but it was enough to give some nice color. Just for interest, here it is before Glamour Glow:



And here is the mess the air made of the moon -- cropped to a size to fit here, not re-sampled, to show a 100% view:



Higher in the sky in clearer air it can look a lot sharper. This one was a few hours after full, so more detail shows in the craters. Again, a 100% view, both just from the raw files:

[Nancy Bell]

Interesting all the "before" info you provided. For me, your OOTB image has more emotional impact that the straight image. I like the softening of the trees and the glow. That moon is huge and I really notice those lines that radiate out from the "button" on the bottom, and all those dark shapes. It is mesmerizing!

[Judy Howle]

That is incredible Diane! I like both versions equally, the sharp version and with the glow effect. The color of the moon is very rich and adds a lot to the impact of the image!

[Diane Miller]

Thanks, everyone! I'm not very good at filters but I love doing composites. (Need to work on filters!)