Back to Philly

It's been a while, but I've made a trip into the city of Philadelphia to begin producing some new work from there. For the last few years I've been concentrating on more natural settings, and also of birds and other animals. But I do enjoy the more scenic parts of the city as well, especially in the right light.

During the morning when our family is preparing for our day we often have a local news channel on the TV. They usually show a shot of the city from across the Delaware River from the riverfront of Camden, NJ. Frequently there is a beautiful sunrise that casts a soft morning light across the hulking buildings, making them look almost beautiful (if you can say that about a hulking building).

So that's where I headed, across the Ben Franklin Bridge (by the way a very beautiful bridge in its own right), to the area near the Adventure Aquarium. On this morning the pre-dawn light was quite nice, and some soft distant clouds provided a subtle backdrop to the skyscrapers. I took a number of "keeper" shots, but one that stood out for me was the one below, where I include the moon that stood far above. I don't usually make a concerted attempt to extract deep meaning from my photos, but there's something about this composition that makes me reflect on how small our world is in the big scheme of things.

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.