The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
For maybe the first time, I managed to get the crescent Moon – the day after the new moon. There is variation in how high it will be and the percentage of the illuminated disc, and this was an easy one. Many are too low for my 3 degree horizon, and it is often cloudy. There was a hint of clouds, seen in the glow below the moon, but not enough to put on a wider lens and get a composition with them. It only moved into the very thin clouds shortly before disappearing into the trees.
Specific Feedback
All comments welcome!
Technical Details
The moon is a single exposure with darks and lights pushed to bring out the earthshine. The trees were focus stacked in a separate exposure and composited. Lightroom Enhanced NR did a better job than Topaz Denoise, by a slight margin.
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
Congratulations on getting a crescent moon! Last night was nothing but clear skies and I thought it was going to give me a boring photo but the earth shine and the coupled with Pleiades it was nice. Your earth shine came out much better than mine. Great job. But what is going on with the pixelation? It’s on mine too.
Thanks, @Youssef_Ismail! I really leaned hard on the Shadows and Highlights sliders to get the earthshine without overexposing the bright crescent more. I’m not seeing anything I would call pixelation – can you describe it?
This is such a peaceful looking image Diane. It’s the sort of scene I like to watch from my back verandah.
I like the subtle stars, not viisible on the smaller version. You’ve captured the moon like a transparent glass globe.
Very thoughtful idea of focus stacking the trees! The image would have been great if you didn’t focus stack the trees, but that very thoughtful idea has made the image just that much better.
Thanks, @Gill_Vanderlip and @glennie! The trees were ugly blobs on the frame focused on the moon. It takes about two attempts to photograph any night sky object before the wisdom of simple focus stacking is realized. With the wide-open apertures needed for night sky objects, things half a mile away are OOF when you are focused on stars. Here, even focused on the tree, the DOF is not enough to get all the branches in focus. If I had been thinking, I should have stopped down a lot and increased the exposure time to give me a better result. These trees are about 200 ft away.
