single photos The Moon over water !

Please let me know what you think.

I think you have a very nice image here.

Honestly? It looks like a combination of Flamingpear filters. My apologies if I'm wrong.

I took the picture of the moon there is no change at all to the moon. As for the water I added it with photoshop just for fun.

Sorry, but it just doesn't work for me. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should, and that applies here for my personal tastes. Other viewers may differ. Still, I appreciate the experimentation.

For me, the water looks unreal. However, the moon depicted very nice! I do like your idea!

I like the experimentation, Tom. This is going to sound like a real cliche, but the placement of the moon right in the certer of the frame doesn't work as well as it could. Maybe put the moon higher in the frame, have move foreground and maybe add some foreground detail - a silhouette of a man in a rowing boat or a bird in flight or something along those lines. Now onto the positive: i like the water and the moon's reflection in it - you did a splendid job there.

If you've ever looked closely at the moon as it rises or sets over the horizon, it's shape (and that of the sun at sunrise/sunset for that matter) is distorted by atmospheric refraction. Your line-of-sight to the rising/setting moon (or sun) has a very long path length through the atmosphere (distorting the moon's shape as well as giving it a warmer color), and furthermore the change from air to the vacuum of space (or vice versa, for light from the moon or sun incident at the top of the earth's atmosphere) is accompanied by a slight change in the index of refraction, causing the line-of-sight to bend downward (towards the horizon). As a result, the moon (or sun) will appear somewhat compressed in the vertical direction relative to its apparent angular size in the horizontal direction.

 

Note also that the full moon is approximately 180-degrees opposite in the sky from the sun. Hence when the full moon is either rising or setting, the sun is simultaneously setting or rising, respectively. Therefore the sky won't be pitch black when the full moon rises or sets, but generally a twilight sky.

 

While less artistically dramatic than your original, astronomically I would expect to see something more along the lines of the attached image, but likely with more wave/surface detail visible in the ocean or lake to the left and right of the moon's reflection, since this would still be a twilight scene....

 

Alternatively, the pitch black background of the original could be retained and still be correct, astronomically speaking, were the phase of the moon altered. At quarter moon, the moon and the sun are 90-degrees apart in the sky: waxing moon at first quarter sets around midnight, while waning moon at last quarter rises around midnight. A waning gibbous moon rising over water a few hours before midnight might present a view similar to Tom's original, such as in this new attachment. (Photo credit to photo.net's Tony Quinlan for the gibbous moon original image I warmed, shrunk, and cut+pasted into the attachment. See Tony's original on photo.net at this location: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6990698&size=lg ... well worth a look)