Reaching for the Moon

July 27, 2016 ·

Wenjie Qiao

When I don’t have time to travel to dream locations, I enjoy taking photos locally. The only problem with photographing locally is you have to photograph similar photos again and again. That is why I thought about adding a new element to improve the familiar scene, such as the Moon. Since I developed a mobile app called “PlanIt for Photographers” (“planit” in short), I use it to help myself look for the best timing and ideal locations to get the moon photos I envision. After a couple of years, I have gotten some nice photos and have also developed techniques that are useful when photographing the Moon. I would be more than happy to share them with you.

How the Moon Works?

I’ve learned over the years that photography is not just about taking photos. There is a lot of planning and details behind it. No matter what subject you want to photograph, you need to understand it very well. Landscape photographers need to know how to read the clouds and the weather. Bird photographers know everything about birds. To photograph the Moon, you need to know how the Moon works. By using the “planit”, I was able to summarize some rules, which are useful in taking photos of the Moon.

The Moon rises an average of 50 minutes later each day.

This rule will give you a rough estimate of today’s moonrise time if you happen to know yesterday’s moonrise time. However, this is just an estimate, as the 50 minutes is just an average. If you need to know the exact time, you will need information from the web or the app.

If you have the “planit” app, you can switch to the “Sun”/Moon Finder” ephemeris page, search for Moonrise, set the elevation angle 0°, azimuth to “Any” (leaving it as blank means any), and then check the results that come up (see Figure 1). If you don’t have “planit”, that’s fine; timeanddate.com is an excellent website to look up information related to the Sun and the Moon.

A quick note about the icons: The icon with “N” letter on top means azimuth, or the direction, of the Moon when it rises. It starts from North 0°, clockwise to East 90°, then to South 180°, then to West 270°, and finally back to North 0°. The other icon with an arrow pointing up means the elevation angle or altitude. For each row in the picture above, it shows, from left to right, the moonrise time, the moon elevation at the moonrise time, the moon azimuth at the moonrise time, the moon percentage at the moonrise time, and the sun elevation at the moonrise time.

In comparison, Figure 2 is for the sunrise. As you can see, the sunrise time and azimuth change very little for consecutive days. This is the reason why it is a lot easier to find a time for a perfect Sun alignment than a Moon alignment.

The Moon always rises from the east and sets to the west.

This is the same for both Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The difference is: for the Northern Hemisphere, it rises from the east, moves westward through the southern sky. For the Southern Hemisphere, it rises from the east, moves westward through the northern sky. When the location is close to the equator, the Moon will move almost directly overhead.

According to this rule, you will never see the Moon appear in the northern sky in Northern Hemisphere, or in the southern sky in Southern Hemisphere. If you see a photo with the Moon in that location, you know the Moon was placed there in post-processing.

The Moon has phases because looking from the Earth,
the sunlight can only light up part of the Moon.

You can understand why there are moon phases from Figure 4 below.

In a 30 day cycle, the Moon first increases in size, called “waxing,”
then decreases in size, called “waning.”

Starting from the new moon, the moon phase changes to the waxing crescent moon, to the first quarter, to the waxing gibbous, then to the full moon. In this process, the lighted part of the Moon gets bigger and bigger. That’s why we call it “waxing”, which means “growing”. The second half of the process starts from the full moon to the waning gibbous, to the last quarter, to the waning crescent, and back to the new moon. In this process, the lighted part gets smaller and smaller, that’s why we call it “waning”, which means “shrinking”. Then it starts again, having about 30 days (29.53 days) in a cycle.

The full moon’s moonrise always goes together with the sunset;
its moonset always goes together with the sunrise.

Everyone likes full moons, not just photographers. But photographers like the full moon not only because the Moon is big, but also because it is always around sunrise or sunset time. We all knew the light is the softest and most colorful during sunrise and sunset, making the full moon a perfect subject to photograph.

As a matter of fact, each phase of the Moon has a relatively fixed rise and set schedule. For example, the full moon always rises around sunset time. The waxing gibbous always rises in the afternoon. The waning gibbous always rises before midnight. The waxing crescent rises in the morning and the waning crescent rises after midnight before sunrise.

One of the classic pictures from Ansel Adams is the famous “Moon and Half Dome”. As you can see, the Moon is a waxing gibbous. This picture was taken facing east, which means the Moon just rose not long ago. Based on what I have said so far, you would immediately know the picture was taken in the later afternoon. This conclusion is also consistent with the shadow on the Half Dome because the Sun was clearly in the west in order to cast such a shadow. Ansel Adams mentioned this photo was taken in 1960 without saying the actual date and time. But with the help of “planit”, I easily figured out a few possible times in 1960 when the moon was at this location in the sky. Then based on the snow on the ground, I nailed it down to a date in winter. The only possible time is December 28, 1960 at 4:05 PM. Although it is a picture from many years ago, the “planit” app can still be useful.

Of course, “planit” can also be used to predict the future. On December 29, 2017 at 4:06 PM, the Moon will appear at this exact same location in the sky. I will organize some photographers to photograph this event, not to replicate his picture but to show our respect to the legendary Ansel Adams and his inspiration to photography.

The absolute brightness of the Moon is the same during the day or at night

This may be contradictory because you think the Moon at night is brighter than the Moon during the day. Actually, the moonlight is the reflection of the sunlight, which doesn’t change that much. The reason you feel the Moon is brighter is because the ambient light is different. Our eyes adjust to the ambient light, causing us to think the Moon brightness is different. The main factor for the ambient light is the Sun elevation, which means you need to pay close attention to the Sun elevation while photographing the Moon.

This rule is essential to get the proper exposure when photographing the Moon along with foreground. You will use different exposure settings and strategy when the Sun is at 6° above the horizon, at the horizon, or 6°, 12° or 18° below the horizon if you want to capture both foreground and the Moon. Auto exposure in your camera will probably not work. I will talk about it in details later.

Photographing the Moon
Exposure

Let’s start with photographing the Moon itself. I just mentioned that moonlight is the reflection of the sunlight. For the sunlight, there is a Sunny 16 rule.

Sunny 16 rule: On a sunny day and with ISO 100 film / setting in the camera, one sets the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to reciprocal of the ISO. For example if the aperture is f/16, the ISO is 100, then the shutter speed would be 1/100 of a second.

Can we apply the rule to the moon? Theoretically, yes. However, when photographers tried it on the Moon, they found out the Moon was a little bit underexposed. So they derived another rule called Looney 11, 8, 5.6 rule which increases the exposure by 1, 2 and 3 stops, respectively, for different moon sizes.

Looney 11, 8, 5.6 rule: on a clear day and when the full moon is high in the sky, with ISO 100 film / setting in the camera, one sets the aperture to f/11 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the ISO. For example for the full moon, if the aperture is f/11, the ISO is 100, then the shutter speed would be 1/100 of a second. If the Moon is a gibbous or half moon, change the aperture to f/8. If it is a crescent moon, change the aperture to f/5.6.

While the rule is pretty accurate for the Moon that is high in the sky, you still need to check the exposure and adjust accordingly. When the Moon just rises, the moonlight has to pass a much thicker atmosphere, thus, we need to use a slower shutter speed or a larger aperture. I usually use f4, 1/20 to 1/50 and ISO 100 when photographing the Moon that just rises. When the Moon rises higher and higher, I adjust the settings with it. The clearness of the sky and the existence and thickness of the clouds will also have an impact on the settings.

In order to prove the “Looney 11 Rule” myself, I took some experimental photos. All the full moons below are from the raw files without any adjustments except cropping.

The settings of the middle shot in the second row is based on the “Looney 11 Rule”. As you can see from the histogram, it is right in the center and is indeed the best shot. However, modern cameras have a wide dynamic range. I tried to increase the exposure by 1/3 stop at a time and took a series of photos. The middle one in the first row has 2 1/3 stop more exposure than the Looney 11 one. Although the histogram is way to the right, it doesn’t have any highlight clipping. In other words, you can choose any one of the settings in the red box of figure 7 to photograph the Moon. Even though some of the moons look washed out, you can easily adjust the exposure in post-processing to bring out details. Overexposing can help reduce noise. This is something called Exposure to the Right (or ETTR in short). You will see later that I use this ETTR technique to make the most out of the moon photos.

Focal Length

If you only photograph the Moon, a tele-photo lens is required. I would recommend at least 300 mm, although 400 mm to 800 mm is preferred. That’s the only way to capture the details on the Moon surface. You should use manual settings so that you can adjust each setting independently. Again, I took some experimental photos to show what the Moon looks like under different focal lengths – from 11 mm all the way to 1000 mm. All photos were taken by a full frame camera without any cropping.

08. Focal Length Comparison-01 08. Focal Length Comparison-02 08. Focal Length Comparison-03 08. Focal Length Comparison-04

Figure 8 Focal Length Comparison

Moon Composition with Foreground

Other than taking pictures of the Moon itself, you can also photograph the Moon with foreground when the Moon is just rising or is just about to set. A bright moon will catch viewer’s attention in any moon photos. That’s why it is important to “place” the Moon at the best location in the composition. By “placing”, I mean looking for the time when the Moon will be there, not “pasting” in Photoshop. Whenever I go out to photograph the Moon, I always use “planit” to plan it first. After I find out where the Moon will be, I then decide where to go to get the best composition. Here are three compositions I would like to share with you.

Symmetric Composition

If the foreground is symmetric, I will choose symmetric composition and “place” the Moon at the center.

This shot was taken at the Salk Institute near UCSD. You can google to find out what’s special about this architecture. For now, all you need to know is that the architecture is symmetrical if viewed from the center line. There is even a water tunnel down the center. As a matter of fact, many people went there for sunset alignment at this location, and it gets really crowded. If you don’t want to fight for a spot, you can photograph moonsets instead. With a couple of friends, I used “planit” to plan a moonset shot, and went there around 5 am to wait for the Moon to align. When it was perfectly aligned, the Moon was partially covered by clouds but it was still strong enough to light up the water tunnel.

Figure 10 Prediction of Salk Institute Moonset

You can see from the picture above how I use “planit” to find out the possible time when the Moon is aligned at Salk. It also shows a list of possible dates later this year that you could go there to take a similar shot.

This shot shows the San Diego Skyline from the Harbor Island. All the highest buildings are pretty much at the same height in downtown San Diego (due to its adjacent airport’s height restrictions), which makes the skyline look even. Because of that, I decided to use symmetric composition by placing the Moon at the center with buildings on both sides. Again, I used “planit” to calculate this location on Harbor Island so that the moon rises just behind the far-away mountain between the buildings.

Rule of Third Composition

If the foreground is not symmetric, I will place the Moon at 1/3 on one side to create a balance.

The shot was taken at the cross section of Lucinda St. and Golden Park Ave. As you can see, the high buildings are mostly on the left side, leaving the right side relatively empty. That’s why I placed the Moon at the one third to the right. Luckily, the Moon looks like a dog eye with the clouds. The scene looks like a dream to me. Of course, if the buildings on the left are even higher, it will create a more compelling composition. So if you live in a city that has an uneven skyline, you can try this composition by placing the Moon to the side with lower buildings.

Alignment Composition

As I mentioned earlier, the movement of the Moon is very irregular. It is much harder to have a moon alignment than a sun alignment.

Figure 13 Full Moon over One America Plaza

In order to take this alignment photo, we carried heavy tripods and walked on a sandy beach. I held the phone at the same time to check the GPS location, until we found the exact spot on the beach. The Moon was not out yet, people around us looked surprised and wondered why we chose such a strange location. When the Moon showed up and center aligned with the One America Plaza, they finally understood what’s going on.

This is another example of an alignment shot. In order to take this shot, I went to a place (in the middle of nowhere) 12 miles away from the Black Mountain, the small hill in picture, in the suburbs of San Diego. Since it is so far away, I had to use my biggest tripod with a 500 mm f4 lens. I actually took this shot to verify the accuracy of “planit”. It nailed it on the first try. Now I know the app can predict the Moon position with such accuracy, I could potentially take this kind of shot with a more interesting foreground, or maybe with people performing some actions on the mountain.

I also took a video with another camera to prove that I didn’t place the Moon in Photoshop. You can see the whole moonrise process in the video.

Figure 15 Street view at the Camera Location

This is a Google street view from the camera location. The arrow points at Black Mountain, which is very tiny. As you can see, it is really far away.

Composition is a very subjective decision. The three compositions I mentioned so far are relatively easy to follow. You can always go creative. Some other common compositions for the moon photos are leading composition (road, train track or river that goes far away with the Moon at the end), and silhouette composition (With the Moon as background, a subject or people nearby as silhouette). No matter what compositions you think of, you can always use “planit” to plan ahead to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Clouds and Moon

When photographing the Moon, clouds are crucial. During a moonrise, the moonlight has to go through a much thicker layer of atmosphere to reach us. Even a very thin layer of clouds in the way could block the Moon completely. When the Moon rises high, we wish to have clouds covering the Moon. The clouds will not only help with the composition by adding some extra elements, but also keep the Moon from being over-exposed. On the other hand, if we want to photograph a lunar eclipse, you will wish for a cloudless night. Even though “planit” can predict where the Moon is, it can’t predict clouds. Most weather apps can predict the weather but can’t predict exact cloud locations either. Unless it is raining or overcast, you never know whether you will see the Moon or not. The only way is to keep trying. I promise that you will be rewarded for your hard work.

Exposure of the Moon with Foreground

If you want to include the Moon and the foreground in the same picture, you must know the brightness difference of the Moon and the foreground. If the difference is too big, you won’t be able to cover both in one shot. You either get an over-exposed moon, or an underexposed foreground. In this case, you will have to photograph two photos at different exposures, then combine them in post-processing. Now the question is how you know when you should photograph two photos. It is actually very simple.

Modern image sensors used by Nikon or Sony have a very wide dynamic range (DR in short). They go up to 14. Sensors used by Canon have less dynamic range but can also reach 12. The unit for these two numbers is Exposure Value at ISO 100, or EV in short. 14 or 12 is just in theory. In a real case scenario, we should keep the scene’s DR within 8. Otherwise, the noise in the shadow will be too big. So the question of when to photograph two photos now becomes finding out the EV values of the Moon and the foreground.

We listed many typical scene’s EV in “planit” app’s exposure page. You can also calculate the EV from a sample shot. According to Looney 11 rule, we can calculate the EV for full moon is 13.6 (see below). When the full moon just rises, the EV is 10 to 12.

The EV for skyline at night is 1 (see below).

Based on those numbers, the EV between the rising full moon and the skyline is 10 – 1 = 9. For the full moon up on the sky, the EV difference will be 13.6 – 1 = 12.6. You can see the picture below for an example where the moon is over exposed. Since both 9 and 12.6 are greater than 8, you will have to take two photos in this case.

What if you just want to get both in one shot? The only possible way is to find the perfect timing that the Moon rises just a few minutes after the sunset. The EV for skyline at sunset time is still around 10. When the Sun goes down more and more, the EV for the skyline will go down as well. Eventually, it will stay at 1 after the Sun is about 8° or more below the horizon. Your best bet is to find the time when the skyline EV is between 3 and 6. If you are using “planit”, just check the Sun elevation. When the Sun is about 2° to 4° degree below the horizon, the skyline EV is about 3 to 6. In this case, you only need one shot to cover both foreground and the Moon.

See Figure 19 for an example. I took this photo in one shot.

The screenshot above shows the moonrise time for the full moons. The actual definition of the full moon is when the moon is at 100%. However, in “planit”, we consider every moon above 97.5% as a full moon. You can’t really tell the difference from a 100% moon unless you photograph the Moon with a super long tele-photo lens. That’s why in “planit”, there are usually three (or sometimes four) consecutive days with full moons. The Sun elevations are different on these three days. On the first day, the full moon rises when the Sun is still up in the sky. On the second day, it rises when the Sun is about to or just set. On the third day, it rises when the Sun is already set for a while. You can use the Sun/Moon Finder feature in “planit” to get a screen like Figure 20.

Depending on what composition you had in your mind, you can choose one of the three days. For example, if I want to photograph the full moon with the city skyline at night, I will choose the second day because when the moon rises behind the skyline, the Sun is set for a while. I can get both night scene and the full moon. If the composition I want is to have the full moon way up in the sky when sky gets dark, I will choose the first day.

Post Processing the Moon

Many post-processing skills for landscape photography can be used on moon photos as well. I will not repeat them here. I will show you two post-processing techniques for the Moon.

Bringing out the Details of the Moon

This step can be done easily in Lightroom but can also be done in Photoshop when importing the raw file. You can see descriptions on the screenshot below. You might notice the original photo for the Moon on the left is very bright. That’s because of ETTR. You can bring the exposure back to normal by dragging the highlight or exposure slider left a little bit.

Replacing the Moon

If the Moon has no overlap with the foreground, a replacement is easy to do. After you photograph the foreground with the proper exposure, use the same or longer lens to photograph the Moon. Make sure the Moon is not over-exposed. You can refer to the Exposure section above for the proper settings. Now you open both pictures in Photoshop and copy the Moon shot over to the foreground as a new layer. From here, you have two ways to do it.

Method 1: Adjust the Layer’s Blending Mode. I usually use Lighten or Screen modes. It can be useful when the sky behind the Moon is blank. If the foreground was shot at night, I use the Lighten mode. If it is day-time, I use the Screen mode.

Method 2: Double-click on the layer and adjust the Blend if sliders in the Layer Style dialog. It can be used when the sky has clouds and/or cases when the simple Lighten/Screen modes don’t work.

I will use this picture as an example. It was very dark when taking this shot. In order to capture the skyline, the Moon must be over-exposed.

Figure 22 Replace the Moon - Step 1 — Figure 22 Replace the Moon – Step 1

I took another shot. But this time, the Moon is properly exposed. However, the skyline is barely visible.

Figure 23 Replace the Moon - Step 2 — Figure 23 Replace the Moon – Step 2

In Photoshop, select a square area to copy the Moon from the second shot and pasted it onto the first shot. You can include the black sky in the selection which is okay in this case. You will see how to get rid of it later. Move the pasted Moon layer so that it aligns perfectly with the existing Moon.

Figure 24 Replace the Moon - Step 3 — Figure 24 Replace the Moon – Step 3

First, double click on the Moon layer to open the Layer Style dialog. Then adjust the Blend if slider. You can see what I did in Figure 25 below. Please note, to drag the bottom thumb into two separate thumbs, you need to press and hold the Alt key and then drag. That’ll give you a fine control over the edge of the Moon. Now the black background is gone. The Moon layer also merged nicely to the layer below. I felt the Moon was a little dark so I added a new Levels adjustment layer to bring up the lightness of the Moon. It looks more natural to me when the Moon is bright as it is late in night.

Figure 25 Replace the Moon - Step 4 — Figure 25 Replace the Moon – Step 4

This is the final shot.

If the Moon overlaps with the foreground, the simple method above don’t work very well. In this case, you will have to use a more complicated technique called Layer Mask.

I spent a lot of time talking about how the Moon works and the importance of planning ahead. Some people might think taking photos is an impromptu activity, and that there is no need to plan – if I didn’t get the shot I wanted, I can always post-process to get it. However, this idea is not correct. If you ever photograph moonrise, you will know that the Moon moves very fast near the horizon. If you don’t know what camera settings to use, you will probably mess up because you are in such a hurry. If you don’t take the photos with the proper exposure, you can do nothing in post-processing. I will use this moon alignment shot as an example to show you why planning ahead matters.

Figure 27 Layer Mask – Step 1

This is the original shot when the Moon is perfectly center aligned. Your first reaction probably is that the Moon is over-exposed, the buildings are underexposed, and that this is therefore a throwaway shot.

However, if you look at the histogram carefully, there is no highlight clipping or shadow clipping. I drag the highlight slider down and all the Moon details show up. I also dragged the shadow up, the buildings are brighter now, but the noise also shows up (see below) when zooming in. Clearly I need to do something about the noise.

Figure 28 Layer Mask - Step 2 — Figure 28 Layer Mask – Step 2

The good news is I already calculated the exposure beforehand and knew I couldn’t get the ideal exposure in one shot. 30 seconds later when the Moon moves away from the building (You can think about why I wait until the Moon moved away from the buildings), I took another shot with a longer exposure. The Moon is washed out but the buildings look much better. I just need to combine the two photos to get what I want. If you didn’t plan ahead and forget to take one of the two photos, or you took them in the wrong order for the over-exposed one and the underexposed one, you will get into trouble when post-processing. This is a typical situation when post-processing guides how you take the photos.

Figure 29 Layer Mask - Step 3 — Figure 29 Layer Mask – Step 3

After preparing the photos in Lightroom, you can load them as layers into Photoshop. Place the over-exposed one on bottom and the underexposed one on top. Add a mask to the top one, and use a black brush to brush out a mask only on the buildings. It will hide the content from the top layer and use the correctly exposed buildings from the bottom layer. You are done.

Figure 30 Layer Mask - Step 4 — Figure 30 Layer Mask – Step 4

In this particular case, I noticed there is a boat in the front I would like to get rid of. So I create a new layer with the two layers merged and removed the boat in the front. You may wonder why I didn’t move away from the boat when taking the shot. I normally would do that, but since I was taking a moon alignment shot, I had very little room to move left or right. You may run into this awkward situation when you plan such an alignment shot yourself.

Here is the final shot and what the layers look like in Photoshop.

Figure 31 Layer Mask - Final — Figure 31 Layer Mask – Final

How Much Post Processing Should You Do?

Post-processing is important in photography. However, everyone has their own limit of what they do when post-processing. Some people think that the sky’s the limit, while others only do minor adjustments. If you just want to make creative art, you can do whatever you want in post-processing. For me I would like my photos to show the beauty of nature, that’s why I followed a simple one-line rule for post-processing:

To replicate the actual scene as much as you can

This rule applies to all nature landscape photography. For Moon photos, I derived the following three rules from the simple rule above.

Never change moon’s position in the sky: This one is easy to understand. Wherever the Moon is in the actual scene, you should keep it the same if you want to replicate the actual scene. Don’t mislead people by placing the Moon in a random position in the sky that is not possible at all, such as the northern sky in the Northern Hemisphere.

Try not to enlarge the Moon unless in wide angle photos: Moons in wide angle photos are extremely small. You can see them from the previous sample photos where I compared many photos under different focal lengths. You can barely tell it is a moon. The naked eye has an equivalent focal length of 35 mm to 50 mm, so the moon size will seem more natural to the human eye if the photo was taken by a 35 mm or 50 mm lens. The moon from a wider angle shot actually looks unnatural to us. So in order to replicate the actual scene, you should make the Moon larger a little bit for wide angle photos, but not enlarge the Moon for any photos using a 50 mm or above lens. The following photos are some samples I created for comparison purpose. The original one was taken with a 28 mm lens. As you can see, the Moon is very small. I enlarged the Moon so that they are equivalent to 35 mm, 50 mm, 70 mm and 100 mm. You can take a look at them and tell me which one looks more natural to you.

Figure 32 Moon Enlarged Comparison - Original at 28 mm — Figure 32 Moon Enlarged Comparison – Original at 28 mm

Figure 33 Moon Enlarged Comparison - 35mm — Figure 33 Moon Enlarged Comparison – 35mm

Figure 34 Moon Enlarged Comparison - 50 mm — Figure 34 Moon Enlarged Comparison – 50 mm

Figure 35 Moon Enlarged Comparison - 70 mm — Figure 35 Moon Enlarged Comparison – 70 mm

Figure 36 Moon Enlarged Comparison - 100 mm — Figure 36 Moon Enlarged Comparison – 100 mm

Try to keep the Moon details: As I mentioned earlier, the Moon will be over-exposed in the dark night if you want to get a bright foreground. However, when we look at the Moon with our naked eyes, it is not over-exposed. That’s because our human eyes are very advanced. They can adjust quickly for the Moon, unlike the cameras. They treat everything the same. We have to take two photos and combine them in post-processing as I showed you earlier. However, there are cases that I don’t want to replace the over-exposed Moon. If the shot was taken during civil or nautical twilights when the foreground is not very dark, I would make sure the Moon is not over-exposed in the final shot. But if it is very late at night, I don’t care if the Moon is over-exposed. As a matter of fact, if the Moon is darker than the foreground at night, it looks unnatural. Of course, no photographers like over-exposure. I might use clouds (such as Figure 9) or water reflections to prevent or compensate the flaw of an over-exposed Moon.

Taking this picture as an example, I left a lot of room on the bottom to show the Moon reflection on the water. Although the moon is over-exposed, people will naturally think only such a bright Moon can create such a strong reflection. If I pasted a correctly exposed Moon here, it would look unnatural.

Conclusion

The Moon is one of my favorite subjects. I always feel excited when I watch the full moon rise slowly. It reminds me of how I miss my hometown, my family and loved ones. These feelings make me feel motivated to create more photos with the Moon.

I decided to write this article because although the Moon appears almost every day, I find people have very little knowledge about it. I hope you learned something from it. There are still many other topics about the Moon that I wish I could cover but couldn’t, such as lunar eclipses, creative Moon photos, people with the Moon, etc. Hopefully I can cover them in future articles.

Finally, I wish to see more Moon photos from all of you. Most of the photos in this article were taken in San Diego. The city you live in may have some nice spots for Moon photos that you should explore. For example, if you are in San Francisco, the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge is a perfect location for moonrise. For Washington DC, the National Mall and the Capitol Hill are ideal for moonrises, and the Lincoln Monument for moonset. Photographing from New Jersey can get a great composition of the New York City skyline along with moonrises. Think about it, plan it, try it and the most importantly, enjoy being a photographer!

Wenjie Qiao
July 2016

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Wenjie Qiao

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Wenjie Qiao is a landscape photographer based in San Diego, California. He enjoyed the nature and outdoor activities. He developed a popular mobile app called “PlanIt! for Photographers”, available on Android and iOS, which is an all-in-one tool for landscape photographers who actively look for the best light and composition. The app allows you to plan the shots beforehand to make your photography trip way more productive. You can find him on Flickr and 500px.