Coronavirus (COVID-19) has left you at home for the next few weeks and flying away is no longer an option. You can spend your time listening to everything about the Coronavirus, and the conspiracy theories or you can do something different. Look to the skies and find different ways of presenting the same subject in a different way. The moon is a good place to start.
The moon is over 384,000 km from the Earth and only shows one face, which is always seen due to the reflection of the sun light which hits its surface. This object has so many images captured in paintings and photographs.
On the 19th March 2011 at 18:23 I was at Alexandra Palace, London with quite a lot of people to capture the moon. The news had reported that the moon was coming very close to the Earth and it will be an impressive moment. From Alexandra Palace you could see the moon rising over Tottenham and it made a good appearance with its “blood stained face.” The different colours of the moon are due to an effect given the name “Rayleigh scattering.” Look this up in your Search Engine.
I captured one full eclipse of the Sun in the Twentieth Century on a negative film. Since the moon was blocking the sun light there is not much to show and the negative/picture is not available.
It does not matter where you are in the World the moon looks the same. The image above is the moon rising over Negril.
If you are capturing the Full moon you can decide on what colour you want the background to be and what colour you want the moon to be. The closer to the horizon that the moon is gives it the yellow colour. When the moon is high in the sky it is white.
For cityscape images where you live and where the moon sits in the sky can make quite good images. The image above is the moon shining over London on a cold night with a long exposure.
Dramatic effects can be created if you capture the moon on a cloudy day.
Most of the images of the moon can be captured from my living room window. I was capturing the moon with the trees in the foreground when a plane was approaching the moon. As soon as it was close to the moon I captured the image before it flew away.
My view of the moon is not blocked by any high rise flats so I can track it through the night and see when the moon is going down. This allows the trees to be captured in the images as shown above and below.
The above image focussed on the moon with a blurred image of the leaves on the tree.
For the camera lens on a compact camera you have optical zoom and digital zoom. This allows you to see the fine details of a distant object.
If you take images of the moon with the maximum zoom you will get good details but not a full moon. The way around this is to capture the images and stitch them together using a software package for image manipulation. The result is the above image.
The two images above shows the moon going down as daylight approaches. I was fortunate on both occasions to capture the chimneys on the house tops and a change in colour of the moon.
The same object can be presented in different ways. After seeing so many images of the moon see if you can add more variations.
If you will be spending your nights at home for the next few weeks look to the skies by day and night. You can do catch up television if you are missing anything.
Keep your distance. Stay safe.
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