DSC08070.ARW.xmp (6.7 KB)
Was hoping to get a shot of a tree and rising moon. Well that didn’t work well. The moon wasn’t as big as I had wished. And the contrast was just a big too high, even with 3 steps HDR did work. So took a photo just of the moon.
Haven’t used gimp for years so just relearned a bit and gave it a try.
Came up with this, would love to see what other ideas folks have!
The moon is 31 arcseconds across. That’s a half of a degree out of a 180° horizon to horizon sky view. It’s tiny: 3400 km across and 384000 km away. When it formed it appeared eight degrees across the sky from earth. Now that was huge. As the moon rises or sets near the horizon and near identifiable objects on earth, our brain tricks us into thinking the moon is as big as the house or tree you see it beside.
The difference usually comes from the apparent size of the light source. Direct light will be small (the Sun, bare light bulb, etc.) and reflected light on the other hand comes from a large surface (purpose-built reflector, wall, etc.).
The angular size of the Moon and the Sun is the same. Thus, they throw shadows on the ground that are equally sharp. Moon is grey and is reflecting sunlight, so their colours are almost the same, even when close to the horizon.
Barring light pollution, the ratio of [Rayleigh] scattered light from the sky to direct light from the source is also the same. The sky under full Moon thus looks very similar to the sky under sunlight.
You are right, I should have done my homework before answering.
The light in the night should have nearly the same colour like daylight. Anyway because of the darkness there is a colour shift in our perception. That’s why night looks blueish for us. This is called the Purkinje effect. In the linked Wikipedia article it is explained it in more detail.
So even so I was wrong with my assumption, that the colour of the light in the night is different because of the colour of the moon (which I thought it is a blueish grey). I’m right that night colours at least looks different from day colours.
Photographically, all things remaining equal, there is a severe diffrence between the dawn and the dusk. The sun always rises in the East and sets in the West. The moon does its own dance about the sky. The shadow directions vs. illumination levels will be severely different. All things remaining equal (as in take a photo of the sunrise and sunset in the same spot in the same direction) the flora and fauna will also differ. There may even be mountain-breeze vs valley breeze causing a difference.
Kind of walking the fence between too much and strictly realistic… Tried to get a little blue in the sky but at the same time pick up the warmth of the moon. Tried to show a little color in the grass and tree (and hopefully a little volume in the tree) but keep it slightly blued and cool, as shadows would be. The side light on the grass is interesting…
