Moonrise Archives - Light and Landscapes

Creating Fine Art Images of a Moonrise Using Photoshop Blending Techniques

September 4, 2023 by John Caplis

We recently had an amazing “blue” supermoon rise over the nation’s capital. A “blue moon” is the second full moon to occur in a single calendar month, and a “supermoon” is when a full moon is in a closer orbit around the earth, thus appearing larger in the sky than normal. This supermoon was quite beautiful to watch, but presented a few challenges for any photographers who wanted to capture it rising over the monuments on the National Mall. I created a short video tutorial with some useful tips on how to plan for, capture, and process your images for a beautiful moonrise. I summarized the most important tips in a few slides below. This video is very similar to the one posted for creating fireworks images, but it demonstrates how this technique can be used for a different type of image.

The first part of the video discusses how The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) app can be used to assist in your planning for a moonrise shoot. Here is a screen shot from the desktop version of the TPE app showing (1) my shooting location near the IWO Jima memorial (marked as a red pin), (2) the east-west alignment of the monuments on the National Mall, and (3) a light grey line on the map indicating where the moon will rise on the horizon (think of it as a compass reading) in relationship to the alignment of the monuments. You can also see the timing of the sunset, twilight, and the moonrise in the boxes below the map. In this case sunset was at 7:38 pm, twilight ended at 8:38 pm, and moonrise was at 8:49 pm at an azimuth of 88.5 degrees true north.

Sometimes you can make a great moonrise image in a single shot, if the moon is very near the horizon, and you have good twilight color in the sky. But sometimes this combination isn’t always available to you as a photographer. Maybe the sky is past twilight and very dark (as was the case with this moonrise), or the moon in your composition is higher in the sky and therefore very bright compared to the rest of the scene. In those cases, capturing an image of the overall scene at twilight, and a second image exposed later for the moon, gives you the raw materials for making an outstanding blended image. Below are some tips on capturing “the stuff” you will need for creating a blended moonrise image. I used a 100-500 mm zoom lens for these images, with the focal length set around 250 mm to frame the scene.

Here are some tips on blending an image of the scene taken at twilight with your moonrise shot:

Here are some of my favorite shots of this blue supermoon risng over the National Mall on September 1st, 2023!

The moon makes its first appearance over the right wing of the Capitol and silhouettes of the towers of the Smithsonian Institute. (Original size and position)

Atmospheric haze low in the sky turned the moon a beautiful reddish-orange color. (Original size and position)

Moonrise increased 20% in size for a little more dramatic effect in the image.

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Strawberry SuperMoon Rising Over the Thomas Jefferson Memorial

June 29, 2021 by John Caplis

This year’s Strawberry Supermoon (June 24, 2021) featured a fantastic alignment which rose over the Thomas Jefferson Memorial when viewed from the foot of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial.

The timing was also near perfect, as the moon rose during the later part of civil twilight and appeared as a large colorful moon against a pleasing dark blue sky. I used the The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) app to preplan this adventure, and the location and timing information can be seen in the screenshot from my iphone below. For this session, the augmented reality function didn’t have the location of the moon rising in exactly the right spot, but the map view of the moonrise worked perfectly.

Capturing a moonrise scene correctly requires taking at least two images, one image exposed for the foreground scene, and a second image that is exposed correctly for the moon. The two images can be stacked and merged later in processing to recreate the scene that our eyes can see, but modern cameras are still not able to capture this dynamic range of light in a single shot. I find the “lighten” blend mode in Photoshop particularly helpful for processing this type of scene. The warm lighting used to illuminate the interior of the Memorial created a nice color connection between the portico and the beautiful yellow moon.

This particular evening was very breezy, and there was a slight chop on the tidal basin. As a result, there was no reflection of the monument on the water. As the moon continued to rise and worked its way over the top of the Memorial, however, a spectacular display of moonshine appeared on the water that draws your eye across the tidal basin and up to the Memorial and the supermoon.

I noticed the light pollution from the surrounding D.C. skyline added a slight magenta undertone to the sky. I liked the effect, as it adds a bit of extra color to the scene and creates a bit of visual separation between the water and the sky.

You can view more “nightscape” images of our National Capital in my DC at Night gallery.

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Shooting the Moon over the National Mall

June 28, 2020 by John Caplis

A rite of passage for landscape photographers in the D.C. area is capturing the moonrise over the National Mall. A favorite location for this is in front of the Netherlands Carillon Bell Tower between the Iwo Jima Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. From this spot, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol all align into one photo. Catching the moonrise over this alignment in the evening sky only happens twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall). The moon must rise just shy of due east on the horizon during twilight. Getting this image takes planning, patience, and a bit of good luck. This spring (my fourth attempt over a number of years), the weather gods finally smiled upon me. There was a light haze on the horizon which quickly became thick clouds higher in the sky. While I thought this would ruin any chances of getting a good capture, on this night, it actually created some fantastic conditions for colors in the moon that only lasted for a brief moment before the whole show disappeared behind the clouds.

A blood red moon rises over a hazy horizon.

The moon changed from red to orange to yellow as it climbed into the sky. This color transition was stunning to see! Unfortunately, the moon went behind clouds a few seconds later and disappeared from the sky.

Photographers from around the DC area gather for a chance to capture the moonrise. The Netherlands Carillon stands in the background. covered in scaffolding for maintenance work.

This screen shot from The Photographer's Empheris (TPE) app shows the east-west alignment of the monuments, and the spot on the horizon to the north where the moon will rise (the thick blue line). The grey box below shows the azimuth and altitude of the moon as it moves south along the horizon and rises in the sky (skinny blue line).

This screen shot from TPE shows the timing sequence for sunset, twilight and moonrise. For this image to work, the moon must rise about 10 minutes after sunset. This allows the moon to be brightly visible against a dark blue colored sky, with the monuments now fully illuminated in the foreground.

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