I spent some time over the Christmas period catching up with some reading of blogs and other writings of photographers that I'd collected. There is always something new to learn and one interesting tip I picked up was the suggestion of enlarging the moon in photographs. I am not talking about images where a huge moon has clearly been pasted in to create a scene where anyone stood directly under the moon will be sucked into space by it's gravity! Just a little enlargement is required to emphasize our nearest celestial body.
Now initially I baulked at the a suggestion. Image integrity has always something I have been careful to maintain in all my work. Removing ugly pieces of litter I've missed, or the odd carelessly parked car in the distance (usually mine) are the limits of my retouching work. Enlarging the moon was most definitely a no go as far as I was concerned but for a few days I kept thinking about the idea.
On Tuesday this week we had a partial eclipse of the sun that was due to occur during sunrise and therefore would be at or near the horizon. I don't currently have suitable equipment to photograph an eclipse, but given it was sunrise and cloud was forecast I felt that perhaps viewing it with the naked eye might well be possible if the cloud was just the right density to act as a useful filter. Then I excitedly remembered the “Moon illusion” and realised that would mean the eclipse might look even more impressive. The cloud was so thick that Tuesday morning here felt like a scene out of the film “The Road” so no eclipse for me but the thought of the illusion got me thinking.
The Moon illusion is where, for reasons still not entirely clear, the moon appears much bigger when it is near to the horizon than it does when it is high overhead. This illusion only occurs when viewed with the naked eye and not in a photograph. So, could enlarging the moon be a way of restoring a scene to something closer to what I experienced when I made the photograph? I figured an experiment was in order.
A quick search of my archive brought up a handful of candidates and after a little work in Photoshop my favourite was the image of Sandymouth beach on the North Cornwall coast you see here. I remember being a little disappointed at the moon in this image when I first viewed the photograph and I have to admit it does actually make the picture feel a little more authentic. It only works for some images so I won't be applying this technique to every moon photograph, but for the right image it's a useful tool.
On Tuesday this week we had a partial eclipse of the sun that was due to occur during sunrise and therefore would be at or near the horizon. I don't currently have suitable equipment to photograph an eclipse, but given it was sunrise and cloud was forecast I felt that perhaps viewing it with the naked eye might well be possible if the cloud was just the right density to act as a useful filter. Then I excitedly remembered the “Moon illusion” and realised that would mean the eclipse might look even more impressive. The cloud was so thick that Tuesday morning here felt like a scene out of the film “The Road” so no eclipse for me but the thought of the illusion got me thinking.
The Moon illusion is where, for reasons still not entirely clear, the moon appears much bigger when it is near to the horizon than it does when it is high overhead. This illusion only occurs when viewed with the naked eye and not in a photograph. So, could enlarging the moon be a way of restoring a scene to something closer to what I experienced when I made the photograph? I figured an experiment was in order.
A quick search of my archive brought up a handful of candidates and after a little work in Photoshop my favourite was the image of Sandymouth beach on the North Cornwall coast you see here. I remember being a little disappointed at the moon in this image when I first viewed the photograph and I have to admit it does actually make the picture feel a little more authentic. It only works for some images so I won't be applying this technique to every moon photograph, but for the right image it's a useful tool.
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