Moonlight Serenade

[JimFox]

This is from last fall in Colorado. I decided to start exploring the passes just west of Denver last year. It worked out well, as I could stay at my daughters house which is north of Denver, help take the grandkids to school in the morning and then I would leave and go explore and shoot as this area was just less then 2 hours away. I would get home late at night, jump into bed and then get up in the morning with the grandkids and run back out to shoot after they got dropped off at school. Kind of like the best of both worlds.

So this was after I was done shooting the fall colors I had found there on Boreas Pass. I saw the moon was shining nicely in the early twilight with a nice arrangement of clouds. The clouds were moving pretty fast, so I set up and took a series of 30 shots in a row with a 4 second exposure. Back at home I turned the 17 of the 30 shots into a Smart Object in Photoshop, used the Mean blending mode and I had the equivalent of a 68 second exposure. This is similar to what some Sony camera's can do in camera with their Smooth App.

Here is the link to a Tutorial I have on how to do this if anyone is interested:
http://www.focalworld.com/index.php?articles/10-stop-nd-alternative.27/

All thoughts are welcome,

Jim

PS. One advantage to this over an ND filter or the Smooth App is ground layer can stay sharp. The moon maintained a pretty circular shape and ended up looking like it was a full moon. So I did use 1 layer as a base layer and blended back a non moving moon which shows it's phase pretty clearly as just over half full. I almost left it with the larger fuller looking moon, but chose to go with the more accurate looking moon from the base layer.

 

[AlanLichty]

Very nice result. I like the cloud motion without the likely unsharp foreground for ultra long exposures.

I need to go think about situations where I can use this approach.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Very nice Jim, and thanks for the tutorial.

 

[Alisa]

This is from last fall in Colorado. I decided to start exploring the passes just west of Denver last year. It worked out well, as I could stay at my daughters house which is north of Denver, help take the grandkids to school in the morning and then I would leave and go explore and shoot as this area was just less then 2 hours away. I would get home late at night, jump into bed and then get up in the morning with the grandkids and run back out to shoot after they got dropped off at school. Kind of like the best of both worlds.

So this was after I was done shooting the fall colors I had found there on Boreas Pass. I saw the moon was shining nicely in the early twilight with a nice arrangement of clouds. The clouds were moving pretty fast, so I set up and took a series of 30 shots in a row with a 4 second exposure. Back at home I turned the 17 of the 30 shots into a Smart Object in Photoshop, used the Mean blending mode and I had the equivalent of a 68 second exposure. This is similar to what some Sony camera's can do in camera with their Smooth App.

Here is the link to a Tutorial I have on how to do this if anyone is interested:
http://www.focalworld.com/index.php?articles/10-stop-nd-alternative.27/

All thoughts are welcome,

Jim

PS. One advantage to this over an ND filter or the Smooth App is ground layer can stay sharp. The moon maintained a pretty circular shape and ended up looking like it was a full moon. So I did use 1 layer as a base layer and blended back a non moving moon which shows it's phase pretty clearly as just over half full. I almost left it with the larger fuller looking moon, but chose to go with the more accurate looking moon from the base layer.

View attachment 8906

I like this! Glad to see some fall coming out! I like the clouds in this one!

 

[JimFox]

Very nice result. I like the cloud motion without the likely unsharp foreground for ultra long exposures.

I need to go think about situations where I can use this approach.

Thanks Alan! It's a pretty cool approach, because you begin with sharp shots. And when you process it, if you don't end up liking what the LE look of the clouds look like, you still have a sharp shot that you can process without the motion. It's kind of like the best of both worlds.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Excellent, Jim.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Very nice, and excellent explaination.

 

[BarryHamilton]

Very nice light and clouds, Jim. I think this might be a candidate for a composite, using a sharp capture of the moon plugged in the scene. Just a thought.

 

[Mike Mancil]

Excellent results.

 

[JohnC]

That's a nice shot Jim. But you have way more patience than I do to do all that work. I'm too lazy to do something like that.