After a year and a half of including a ‘pic of the week’ at the end of my weekly training summary, I’ve decided to let it stand on its own.  I’m also implementing a rule that the Friday Foto needs to have been taken sometime in the last week.  No recycling.  I am doing this to keep me engaged in building my photography skills, and to make me work harder to get fresh shots.  Click here to see my previous Friday Foto posts.

You’ve probably seen more than a few Supermoon photos by now.  It was a pretty cool event to try and capture.  I lucked out in a few ways – the true full moon wasn’t until Saturday night, but I shot this on Friday with perfectly clear skies.  Saturday turned out to be rainy and overcast in Denver.  I was already camping on Lookout Mountain without even realizing the Supermoon event was taking place.  Once I saw it, I bolted about halfway down the mountain and spent an hour and a half shooting photos.

This is a HDR composite of 3 exposures (3 sec, 13 sec, 30 sec).  I should have taken the brightness of the moon into account, but didn’t realize it was going to flare that badly.  Live and learn.  I tried to fix it and insert the moon from another pic I took that night, but it ended up looking completely faked.  I think next time I’m in a similar situation, I’ll take another shot with a properly exposed moon and sky, then mask that back into the final result.

What I like most about this shot are the added elements.  The radio tower and maintenance shed are interesting, and during my longest exposure a car drove past on the road below.  It is invisible, but the headlights painted the guardrail nicely.  I like the light and detail I was able to pull out of the far hillside, and I love how the city lights turned out looking like some sort of lava flow.

Lookout Supermoon
f/8.0, 18mm @ 640 ISO