Full Moonrise last Friday

All signs pointed to a pretty good full moon on Friday night. Moorise a little after 4:00pm and clear skies. This was not my main objective but when I saw it rising in this field I had to stop and take a few shots. Thanks for looking.

Nicely composed Tom, and I think the dark tones at the bottom add to the realism of this shot.

Here is a silhouette version. Does the centered moon take away from this shot?

Hey Tom I love the top one very nice. I like the colors in foreground grass, midground hills and colors in the sky. The second one is good but I would like to see all of the trees not just top branches, but love the colors and moon.

Hey Tom,

I like both images - on the top one, the composition is very nice, and it gives us a great feel of "night". But there are a few technical glitches (at least they glitches to me!) that might be distracting. For example, there seems to be a slightly dark ring around the moon, and the horizon line looks a little "too" bright right at the trees (in the second photo, this looks more natural).

The second image works for me too - even the centered moon. Though there is a lot of black at the bottom of the frame that could probably be done without.

Both are nice, Tom, but I really like how the broom sedge color contrasts with the dark trees in the first post. But the technicals that Tim pointed out need a little work. Very nice!

Hi Tom I like both photos. In the first I like the placement of the moon, nicely composed. Tim has a couple of good technical points. The second, I like the trees framing the moon. The darker foreground could be trimmed a bit, other wise another nice comp. Nice work!

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. This was a blend and my first attempt was using a brush. It did leave a rather harsh edge between the trees and the sky. I also took a shot of the moon to get more detail and blended it. Tim made a couple of good points and I decided to try a couple of other techniques. Here is what I did on this redo.

Rather than use the brush blending method, I used a gradient blend that Mark Johnson from Radient Vista has used several times. I compared this to the original raw file and the colors in the sky match up very well.

On the moon I made a selection on the second attempt and used the refine edge selection in CS3 to smooth the transition. It appears better overall, let me know you thoughts and suggestions.

I really appreciate the suggestions I get on this forum, it really makes me sit back and think of better ways to get what I really saw when I took this shot.

I have also cropped the second shot and made it more of a pano shot. It is right below.

Pano version on the second shot.

Hey Tom, nice job reworking both images. Now I can't decide which I like best.

Hey Tom, I like the reworked images a lot, especially the first one. Very nice!

Oh yes - the reworked images are much, much better!

Tom nice job on their suggestions. I like the crop of the second one much better now.
Hey lets go take some pics together sometime

The redone shots are much better, well done. I like the foreground detail in the first.

Tom, Great job on both images, and the corrections do help. I prefer the first image as it represents closer to what we see, I think. Well done on both.