-- Chris Hawkins (peace@clover.net), August 07, 1999

Answers

It is a double exposure, isn't it? There, there, you can tell us :). Perspective and lighting on landscape is inconsistent, plus the classical dead giveaway - a blue moon. This sort of thing is done more convincingly digitally, if you have a taste for it. Also, don't use wideangle for foreground shot if you want to pass it as a real photo - converging verticals do not go well with a moon this size.

As for the image, I think foreground is too cluttered. Too many twigs. I would prefer simpler composition, with just the rock edge and the moon.

-- Andrei Frolov (andrei@phys.ualberta.ca), August 07, 1999.

Andrei: I don't know if I should be pleased or offended, but your supposition regarding double exposure is incorrect. This single unmanipulated photo was taken at approximately 7:30PM on approximately June 25 at Zion NP in SW Utah. I used K25, 80-200AFS @ 200, TC-20E, F100, Kodachrome 25, and scanned it with a Nikon Coolscan III. Somewhere I read in the scanner manual that Kodachrome is difficult to scan. In the slide the rock formation glows with the evening light and the foreground evergreen is nearly black. I'll scan some other slides from that evening and post them later tonight or in the morning on my very lame website.

Regarding the converging verticals, Nature doesn't always fit our preconceived notions.

-- Chris Hawkins (peace@clover.net), August 07, 1999.

Perhaps these are more to your liking....

-- Chris Hawkins (peace@clover.net), August 07, 1999.

Please forgive me for doubting your photographic integrity :)... I could have sworn it was a double exposure. The foreground looks like you are standing just below the rock and looking up on it, and the trees emphasize that impression. I still am not sure what's up with the moon color, which is nice blue, instead of gray. It could be scanning (doesn't everything get blamed on it? :), or it could be reciprocity failure (Kodak says KM goes cyan at exposures longer than 1s, but I never tried it myself, so can't say anything about it). In any case, I find the moon color unnatural and distracting, but that could be easily remedied...

Anyway, as I said, I personally favor simple compositions, and think your first photo is to cluttered. I like the second one much better. Maybe I would even go for tighter vertical cropping, including just the moon and the rock accross from it. As nice as the tree siluette is on its own, I think it competes for attention with the moon.

On the lighter note, I must confess that the last time I shot moonrise, I made a complete idiot out of myself. I drag a huge lens out to Rockies in time for a full moon, set up a tripod in the middle of the night, wait for the moon to break out of the clouds, carefully set focus and exposure, lock the mirror up, and shoot most of a roll. Finally, the moon hides in the clouds again, and I go to my tent with a sense of a job well done. Imagine my surprise when I got back home and developed the film only to find that there is not a single frame with moon in it! The goddamn takeup spool did not take the film up! It was pretty dark, so I didn't notice that the rewind spool is not moving. That's what you get for getting used to modern motor-winder cameras... Well, live and learn. Funny thing is, it wound fine for the latter shots. Must have jiggled into place when I carried it around...

-- Andrei Frolov (andrei@phys.ualberta.ca), August 07, 1999.

I like the second photo best. Quite eye catching. Nice job Chris. About a 300mm lens?

I would think that the moon looks blue relative to the rocks because there is a lot of sunlit atmosphere (several miles of it) between the moon and the camera. This atmosphere is reflecting blue light to your camera (that's why the sky is blue). You are seeing a blue atmosphere with a gray moon behind it, not a blue moon. There is much less sunlit atmosphere between the rocks and the camera (only a couple hundred feet of it) and so the blue cast is not visible. At night, of course, there is no sunlit atmosphere between you and the moon and so no blueish cast is seen.

-- Brad Mitchell (bradjm@gte.net), August 11, 1999.

Amazingly, I too thought and would have swear it was a double exposure shot! BTW I don't like at all the first one - no offense - the subject is not well defined and the foreground is way too cluttered for my taste. But the second one is awesome! Really nice work Chris. Underexposition is a good idea that really works for me. And the third one is your proof of integrity... My best guess as far as focal length is that you used a 300mm for the first one, 400mm for the second (the best one IMO) and 300mm also for the last one. I like pictures with the moon or the sun or both in them.

-- Vincent (vincent-leflohic@hp.com), August 12, 1999.