MCP Photography Blog » MCP Collaboration

Super Moon Photography: How to Shoot the Moon

Jodi Friedman, MCP Actions — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:00:39 +0000

Super Moon Photography: How to Shoot and Photograph the Moon

Once every so often the moon gets really close to the Earth. Last night it was the closest it had been in more than 18 years. I was in my last year of college at Syracuse University, and I have to tell you, I was not paying attention to proximity of the moon at that time. Needless to say, I missed photographing it back then.

photo by afH Capture + Design

This past Saturday morning, for the benefit of all MCP Facebook Fans, I posed the following question on my wall: “The full moon will be the closest it has been to earth in almost 20 years. If you have advice for those new to photographing the moon, please add it here. Give tips like, use a tripod, as well as settings and lens advice. Thanks for making this a collaborative effort.” It was so exciting and inspiring to read more than 100 comments to the thread, with photographers all over the world advising and helping each other with photography. All weekend MCP fans shared imagery on my wall. We saw closeup photos from a telescope, Photoshop cropped and enhanced images, many pull-backs with the environment, and I even added one where I used the moon as a texture on top of a floral. If you want to see my two more creative plays, make sure you scroll to the bottom of the post. There is no limit to what you can do. It was fun and inspiring.

photo by Michelle Hires

Here are a few tips posters shared that will help you next time you want to photograph this fun ball of texture:

Even if you missed the “super” close moon, these tips will help you with any photography in the sky, especially at night.

Use a tripod. For all those who said you should use a tripod, some questioned why or said they had taken pictures of the moon without one. The reason for using a tripod is simple. Ideally you want to use a shutter speed that is at least 2x your focal length. But with most people using zoom lenses of 200mm to 300mm, you would be best with speeds of 1/400-1/600+. Based on the math, this wasn’t super likely. So for sharper images, a tripod can help. I grabbed by relic of a tripod, with 3 way pan, shift, tilt, and which weighs almost as much as my 9 year old twins. I really need a new, light weight tripod… I want to add, some people did get successful shots without a tripod, so ultimately do what works for you.
Use a remote shutter release or even mirror lock up. If you do this, there is less chance of camera shake from when you press the shutter button or when the mirror flips.
Use a fairly fast shutter speed (around 1/125). The moon moves fairly fast, and slow exposures can show movement and thus blur. Also the moon is bright so you do not need to let as much light in as you might think.
Do not shoot with a shallow depth of field. Most portrait photographers go by the motto, the more wide open, the better. But in situations like this, where you are aiming for lots of detail, you are better off at f9, f11, or even f16.
Keep your ISO low. Higher ISOs mean more noise. Even at ISO 100, 200 and 400, I noticed some noise on my images. I assume it was from cropping in so much since I nailed the exposure. Hmmmm.
Use spot metering. If you are taking closeups of just the moon, spot metering will be your friend. If you spot meter, and expose for the moon, but other items are in your image, they may look like silhouettes.
If in doubt, underexpose these images. If you overexposure,it will look as if you dabbed a big white paint brush on it with a glow in Photoshop. If you purposely want a glowing moon against a landscape, ignore this specific point.
Use the Sunny 16 rule for exposing.
Bracket exposures. Do multiple exposures by bracketing, especially if you want to expose for the moon and clouds. This way you can combine images in Photoshop if needed.
Manually focus. Do not rely on autofocus. Instead set your focus manually for sharper images with more detail and textures.
Use a lens hood. This will help prevent extra light and flare from interfering with your photos.
Consider what is around you. Most submissions and shares on Facebook and most of my images were of the moon on the black sky. This showed details in the actual moon. But they all start to look alike. Shooting the moon near the horizon with some ambient light and surroundings like mountains or water, had another interesting component to the images.
The longer your lens, the better. This is not true for a full landscape view of surroundings, but if you just wanted to capture details on the surface, size did matter. I switched from my Canon 70-200 2.8 IS II – as it did not seem long enough on my full-frame Canon 5D MKII. I switched to my Tamron 28-300 for more reach. Truthfully, I wish I had a 400mm or longer. I hated how much cropping I need to do in post processing.
Photograph soon after the moon rises. The moon tends to be more dramatic and appears larger when it comes over the horizon. Through the night it will slowly appear smaller. I was only out for an hour, so I did not observe this myself.
Rules are meant to be broken. Some of the more interesting images below were a result of not following the rules, but instead using creativity.

As the day went on, photographers shared their moon photography as it got dark in their part of the world. First Australia, New Zealand, and Asia, then Europe, then the Unites States and Canada. If you were one of the lucky ones with clear skies, I hope you had the chance to shoot the moon and turn your photos into art. For those that encountered clouds or who did not have the proper equipment, I wanted to share some photos taken by MCP Actions customers and fans.

photo by BrianH Photography

The two photos directly above were taken by Brenda Photos.

photo by Mark Hopkins Photography

photo by Danica Barreau Photography

photo by Click. Capture. Create. Photography

photo by Little Moose Photography

photo by Ashlee Holloway Photography

photo by Allison Kruiz – created by multiple photos – merged to HDR

photo by RWeaveNest Photography

photo by Northern Accent Photography – used double exposures and combined in post-processing

photo by Jeffrey Buchanan

And finally… two of my shots. Even with the tripod and shutter release, it was really windy, and that contributed to relatively soft images. If I had it to do over, I would rent a longer lens too. Others got better closeups than I did… But here are my two more artistic interpretations, thanks to photography, photoshop and photoshop actions.

The shot below actually two photos. The moon was viewable from my backyard which was fairly boring. So I combined the moon from the backyard with a shot when the sun went down in my front yard – I used blending methods in Photoshop rather than having to mask and paint the moon on the image around each branch. I also used the new Fusion Photoshop actions (One Click Color) to edit the integrated photo.

My next play was to use the moon as a texture. I found an old floral image and placed the moon texture on top using the Free Photoshop Texture Applicator action. I used the blend mode Soft Light and reduced the opacity to 85%. So remember you can use your photos to paint the moon right on your image as a texture too. Just another fun way to create works of art.

If you shot the moon, please come post your web-sized images to the comment section below. 500 images were sent to me for consideration, so I could not pick them all and tried for variety. Feel free to share your settings and how you created the shot so this can be a reference guide for the future.

iPhone apps for photographers | the collaboration

Jodi Friedman, MCP Actions — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:00:06 +0000

I love my iPhone. Many photographers I know have an iPhone. And based on the amount of iPhone apps under the photography section of the iTunes store, clearly people want to use their iPhone for taking/editing photos or even as a photographer’s tool. A while back, I did a top 10 iPhone apps list. Well the minute you publish a list like that it gets outdated. I wanted to do another, but there are far too many apps for one person to know what is available. So I am hoping all my fellow readers/iPhone users will come post to the comment section of my blog or Facebook Fan Page and help me compile a list I can share in a week or two.

What are your favorite photography apps?

Please leave the following information so I can organize this list when I post it:

Name of the app
Description of the app
How would you rate it – scale of 1-5 (5 being best) – what do you like and dislike about it
Which category does it fall into:
- helps in taking pictures on the iPhone
- helps in editing pictures on the iPhone
- gives advice/tutorials on on photography or photoshop
- photographer’s portfolio
- great social media app for photographers to connect
- great business tool to help photographers
- other: write what category you would put it in
Write anything else you feel would be helpful for me to include when I publish the article

1000′s of Free Photoshop Textures

Jodi Friedman, MCP Actions — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:07:36 +0000

Free Photoshop Textures: If you love using texture on your images, then you do not want to miss these links. Below are some Amazing Free Photoshop Texture Websites with thousands of free textures that you can download and use in your photography. If you have a site you think I should add to the list, please let me know. And if you see a broken link, please let me know that as well.

If you love textures, be sure to download the FREE MCP Texture Applicator Action, a Photoshop action that adds textures to your photos. Just download textures from these sites and use the action to apply them to your images. Compatible with both Photoshop CS2, CS3 , CS4 and CS5 as well as Elements, you are sure to keep busy…

Also please make sure to join the MCP Textures Flickr Group to download more free textures and share some of your own.

Please make sure to check the terms of use for each artist prior to use.

Free Textures

Video Tutorial on Adding Texture to Your Images in Photoshop:

Thank you to Mariana Herrera Mosli of Kismis Ink Photography for helping me gather these links.

MCP Collaboration: Free Photoshop Textures

Jodi Friedman, MCP Actions — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:00:18 +0000

This my my second MCP Collaboration. This time we are going to compile links to some great free texture resources.

I hope all of you will participate! Here is how it will work. We will brainstorm a list together of some amazing sites and links to free textures that can be used in Photoshop. Then I will create a post from that brainstorm – in an easy to find place so you do not need to dig through all the comments. If you have any idea what you would like to collaborate on, send me an email directly or through my site.

This week’s collaboration is: FREE Photoshop Textures

To make this the very best it can be, please comment below with a link to your favorite free textures sites . I will compile a list and post it on the blog next week or two. The more people that participate, the better this resource will be. If you read this from Facebook or Twitter, please come to the blog to comment or your resource may be missed accidentally.

Make sure you link to the site that owns the textures. You may link to web sites, flickr texture groupings that are available for download, or any other site that has complimentary textures. If you have any questions, let me know.

Please post your example in the comment section like this: (site name) Designm.ag: (link) http://designm.ag/resources/50-fabric-textures/ (write a description of what types of brushes they have) 50 fabric textures

Oh, and for fun, I wanted to share a link on how to add texture to your flower macro shots at Pioneer Woman (where I guest blog occasionally) and you can grab the textures I used in this shot below.

Free Photoshop Brushes: 21 Great Places to Download Brushes

Jodi Friedman, MCP Actions — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:00:39 +0000

Photoshop brushes can be fun and really add to a picture when used artistically. What is better than that? Free Photoshop Brushes!

Below is a list to thousands of amazing brushes that you can use to embellish your images, add frames, make backgrounds, and so much more.

Check the MCP Blog to find out 10 Exciting Fun Ways to Use BRUSHES in Photoshop.

MCP Collaboration – Free Brushes for Photoshop

Jodi Friedman, MCP Actions — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:00:38 +0000

I had a brainstorm today… Guests have become a fun part of my blog, mainly because everyone has something valuable to give. So I thought I would start a new concept here at MCP: MCP Collaborations. These will be a FUN way to have all MCP readers help each other.

I hope all of you will participate! Here is how it will work. I will name a topic. And I have a bunch of great ones planned. And we will brainstorm a list together. Then I will create a post from that brainstorm – in an easy to find place so you do not need to dig through all the comments. If you have any idea what you would like to collaborate on, send me an email directly or through my site.

This week’s collaboration is: FREE Photoshop Brushes

I have a list of links started to share with you but I want to make this list bigger and then share it in a post with everyone.

To make this the very best it can be, please comment below with a link to your favorite free brush sites . I will compile a list and post it on the blog next week. The more people that participate, the better this resource will be. If you read this from Facebook or Twitter, please come to the blog to comment or your resource may be missed accidentally.

Please post like this example:

(site name) Brusheezy: (link) http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes (write a description of what types of brushes they have) huge assortment of brushes

Look forward to this. I have many more collaborations planned if this 1st one is a success.