Playing God--Re-touched By Golly

This is the last of my Utah shots. Thanks so much for letting me pop into your forum and share my vacation pictures.

I timed my trip to Utah and NR Grand Canyon to coincide with the full moon, and I only got one shot, as it rose the first night. The next morning, I walked a mile to my designated spot for moon set sunrise, only to reach into my back pack and realize I had every lens and my tripod, but no camera body!!! That'll teach me to dust things off before bed. So, I went back to the cabin, got the body and took some shots that were less than pleasing as it was a bit late.

I satisfied myself with taking a few tele shots of the moon and playing god by pasting it into the foregrounds I had hoped to capture naturally. Her is a potpourri of my attempts. The first one, above is real. All the others were put together using the selective mode tool in Photomatix (I like using software against its intended use).

To those offended by my manhandling planets: I know, I'm sorry, but I did have fun, and I always tell the truth.

Now for the phoney ones:

Grand Canyon, North Rim, like above.

Peek-A-Boo Moon

Marylynne, your 3rd and 4th shots are very impressive.

I agree with Howard, but I see a distinct dark halo around the moon in both shots.
Probably an artifact that was enhanced with JPEG compression ?

I've never forgotten my camera body, but I have reached for what I thought was a fully charged spare battery only to find it dead.

yeah, the halo on the last two were not as visible in the tiffs, but they were still detectable because the moon was from a different sky (and I'm not great at moving heaven and earth convincingly). in the first phoney one, the moon was justfrom the same sky, but different lens (100-400mm for the moon and moderate wideangle for the landscape...It was a more straightforward HDR manuever with moon emphasized.

The third and fourth are certainly the best in my book, with the caveat about the technical issues noted by previous posters. The foregrounds feel rather too heavy in the first two.

Thanks, everyone. You have motivated me to go back to the drawing board the last two. i think I can do a more precise job on those.
ML

Okay. I've learned to deceive more convincingly. Let me know what you think of these:

Peek-A-Boo Moon re-do

They both look much better! Whatever you did to 'soften' the harsh moon in the GC shot should be replicated in the Peek-A-Boo image, as that one looks pasted in,. Still, I like these two very much.

Thanks, John. It might be that I increased contrast and clarity too much, but they are different moons, shot with different focal lengths and at different times of day. I actually pasted a good swath of sky in with the peek-a-boo shot as well because the sky in my moon image was pretty close in color and tone to the original peek-a-boo sky. I went random with the part of the sky I included so there woudn't be sharp edges. I'll soften it a tish.