The other day as I was driving home from work, I saw the full moon rising in the east. A huge, dirty orange disc on the horizon. The sight was captivating in such a way that I decided to capture it in a photograph when I got home. Half and hour or so later, I was standing on our terrace with my camera mounted on the tripod in front of me, ready to shoot. Looking at the moon, however, I realized that I may be too late. It had climbed higher and lost its orange glow. It also seemed smaller, even though it still hung low on the horizon. As long as I had my camera out, I thought I would still try to capture the beautiful moonlit winter landscape.
Viewing the resulting images on my screen, the moon looked not just small, but considerably smaller than what it had seemed outside. Intrigued by this seemingly odd result, I did some research on the net, and sure enough I discovered that the moon looks larger when it is near the horizon than when it is higher in the sky. This is just an optical illusion though, one not even properly explained yet, and photographing the moon anywhere will show the same size (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion). Hence, capturing a large moon near the horizon as a backdrop to a wider landscape is not possible.
The shots I got of the landscape, with the “small” moon high up in the sky, were very nice. The silvery moon hanging just above the tretops in a silky smooth sky. Nevertheless, this real world image paled against the illusion stuck in my head from earlier in the evening. The dreamscape of a moon dominating the horizon. Still having an orange tint in its silvery glow. Its craters and valleys standing out against the darkening evening sky. With this illusion in my mind, I created the image you see above. It is created by combining a long exposure of the landscape, with a closeup of the moon, shot at the same spot that evening. The resulting image is close to the way I perceived the moment that cold winter evening.
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