The moon, as it got lower, got oblong…and little ragged on the edge…but was still striking, large and beautiful. Guess my question is … is it a distraction that it doesn’t have a round-smooth edge?
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Instead of distracting, it is intriguing for me wondering what has caused the distortion. I do like the photo. It is as if there were heat waves or some thing else in the air? What was the air quality at that time?
I like the concept of this image, and I like your processing a lot, I’m glad that you kept the luminosity a little darker to maintain a twilight feeling. The moon is beautiful, I love the golden color of it here, it creates a nice color contrast against the blue water. I do not find the edges of the moon to be a distraction, in fact it looks very natural to me.
If I had to nitpick for what is a subjective distraction to me, it would be that i wished there was a little more separation between the moon and the trees, the spacing feels tight to my taste. I would be more concerned about that than the edges of the moon. (it’s a real nitpick I know).
I would have tried to shoot this a little earlier with the moon slightly higher in the sky, or if your ethics would allow it, try some cutting/pasting/ cloning to “move” it up a bit in Photoshop.
Doing these twilight moonrise / moonsetset shots is not easy to do, the moon moves much faster than many people realize, but you have nailed the the exposure/color/processing here. Nicely done.
This might be the case where the moment and the experience you had is pretty difficult to translate to a dynamic and dramatic photo. I think the moon and the atmospheric phenomena is excellent and is what story the image is showing us.
I think the vignette works well as presented; perhaps even increasing up top to make all the corners more the same. I like the tunneling or “portal” effect the vignette is providing"
One question/comment that hasn’t been brought up, is where there isn’t any color reflecting inthe water? Is that because possibly you’re zoomed in past where the reflection can be seen? Not sure… I think having a strong reflection might have elevated this further.
Thanks for all the comments thus far. About the water reflection…it’s interesting you bring that up. There actually wasn’t any water reflection, probably owing to the low angle of the moon and dimness of it as it was setting, so I dodged a little lightness in to give the faint impression of a moon reflection. Perhaps I should have introduced some yellow into that
I like how you presented this, the processing is spot on. Atmospheric effects love to play tricks with the sun and moon when they are near the horizon. I was not surprised by the warping effect of the moon, I have seen it many times. I too was wondering about the reflection. It seems like there is somewhat of a lighter zone in the water vertically in the middle. I think Lon is on to something, that the reflection would have taken this to the next level. Great work though.
