Moonrise Over Sunset Crater, Flagstaff, AZ

[Matthew_Chatham]

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Hello again NPN friends! I am returning after a hiatus of over three years and feel excited to be back.

This image is of the moonrise from tonight, September 16, over Sunset Crater in Flagstaff, Arizona, where I’m visiting. My original goal was to get a wider image with more depth and foreground, but decided to pull my camera off of the tripod and use a longer lens instead. I made this call because (1) the wind was up and my foreground flowers were blowing all over, and (2) I think I was a bit too far away from the crater for this type of image to work anyway. The crater and moon were smaller in frame than I wanted them to be.

In the end this is one of many images of the moon rising behind the crater that I got and I’m pretty happy with it!

Specific Feedback

I originally selected the “in-depth critique” option, but decided to go the standard route because honestly I didn’t have an explicit creative vision in mind for this image, beyond “take a nice picture of the moon”.

Request
I’m open to any feedback the community would like to give! I feel pretty happy with the final result, although I question if the jet black and lack of detail in the foreground is too jarring. Other than that I feel pretty confident in my choices while shooting and editing the image. One of the things I’m hoping to get out of my renewed engagement with NPN is bringing more intention and vision to my photography. I feel confident in my technical skills and aesthetic foundation, but less confident about what my “vision” and “style” are, or what I want them to be. I’ve noticed that many of my photos incorporate deep black foreground silhouettes, so I guess that’s part of my style. Anyway, if anybody has feedback or thoughts to share regarding style/vision, I’d greatly appreciate it! Anything else that comes to mind is also welcome.

Composition
Compositionally, the image has three main elements, not including the sky: the foreground, the clouds, and the moon. I cropped out some clouds above the moon, as I thought they didn’t add much. I like the tonal and color contrast of the sharp line and black shapes of the foreground compared to the warm softness of the clouds. This wasn’t intentional, but the moon happens to be located just a hair above the center of the golden spiral, which I guess means it brings harmony or something. I just thought it looked good where it is.

Post-Processing

• White balance: decreased warmth and increased tint
• Foreground: Reduce detail/exposure
• Clouds: Reduce texture/clarity, increase warmth and tint
• Moon: tonal tweaks to bring out contrast and reduced warmth
• Calibration, Color Mixer, and Color Grading: tweaks to my liking. Color Mixer to bring out the sky, Color Grading to add a purple tint, and Calibration to do … whatever calibration does, I just move the sliders until I like it. xD

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any feedback you may share!

Technical Details

Settings: 1/1000s, f/9.0, ISO 1250, 350mm
Lens: Sony E 70-350 F4.5-6.3 G OSS
Special techniques: None, single exposure
Post-processing: Lightroom Classic AI enhance 25%, Adobe Landscape profile, tweaks to white balance, tone, and color. Calibration, Color Mixer, and Color Grading to tweak colors to my liking. Masking for moon, clouds, and foreground.

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Critique Template

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• Vision and Purpose:
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• Composition:
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[Diane_Miller]

A gorgeous capture of the rising almost-full moon. I love the black FG and the moon’s tonalities look perfect. The clouds are a lovely color with their blues picking up the sky. They look slightly OOF as I would expect with good focus on the FG, but I’m puzzled by how sharp the moon is for a single exposure with the FG that sharp. From its size in the frame I’m curious if this is a full-frame sensor and/or a crop? (Not that it matters, just curious.)

[Matthew_Chatham]

Hey Diane! Thank you for your kind words. I think the reason the clouds look OOF is probably me going a little overboard on the negative texture/clarity while editing. I was trying to emphasize the softness of the clouds versus the crispness of the FG. I focused on the moon while shooting, hence why it’s so sharp. Good catch and I think I’ll pull that back a bit, thanks for pointing it out. Also, I’m shooting on APS-C, Sony a6600!

[Diane_Miller]

OK! You captured a gorgeous moon in a lovely setting. I wonder if AI Enhance brought up sharpness on the FG? I shoot with full frame and usually longer lenses and always have to do a focus stack to get the moon and a FG both sharp. Frustrating.

[Matthew_Chatham]

Ah yeah, maybe! I can take a look later and compare the raw versus enhanced, now I’m curious myself. And I wonder if shooting crop sensor helped me out here, since it tends to have deeper DOF. It definitely sounds frustrating having to always focus stack.

[Matthew_Chatham]

I had a chance to compare my raw versus enhanced! I don’t see any difference in sharpness between the enhanced and non-enhanced FG.

[Diane_Miller]

Nor do I – you just captured a very good DOF, and the fine detail was very good to start with – that looks like an excellent body and lens. I have hardly used the denoise in LR, in favor of saving it for PS and using Topaz. Now I’m evaluating DXO’s new Deep Prime XD2 noise reduction. It’s a seductively easy one-click that returns a DNG the same way LR’s Enhanced NR does. Topaz seems to come out ahead with a very slight pixel-level sharpening at its model preferences setting, but that is a very small extra for most images. (Pretty nice for the barbs in bird feathers though.)

[Matthew_Chatham]

Interesting! I have never used anything except Lightroom’s built-in NR and I feel pretty happy with the enhanced NR. It seems to do a good job without getting waxy, way better than the basic NR slider. So no real desire to try anything else and complicate my workflow, especially since I rarely go into PS for most images unless I’m doing a composite. I might have to look into it though, to see if it would be worth trying one of the competitors. I imagine if I shot more wildlife/birds it would make more sense.