Moonshot

I recently made a photo of a moonrise in Yosemite National Park, and I have received some questions about handling the moon in photographs. Many experienced photographers know how to handle the moon but I'll discuss it a little for those who don't.


The light coming from the moon is approximately as bright as other earthly objects in daylight. So if you were to take a picture of the moon during daytime, which is when the above image occurred, you will typically see the moon with all of its details. But if you attempt to include the moon in a nighttime image, with an extended exposure, the moon becomes over-exposed and becomes a bright ball. Some people don't mind that effect, but some do.

There are various ways to handle this problem:

1. Make your photo with the moon during daytime (like the image above)
2. During night-time use a long exposure if you don't mind the "bright ball" effect
3. Some people make two exposures, one exposed for the scene and one exposed for the moon, and they post-process the images to have the moon show with it's detail
4. Some people simply paste in a copy of the moon in a night-time image (I'm not a big fan of this technique, although photography is art so it is not off-limits)

So there you have it.