First Full Moon of the Year

The moon was beautiful a couple of nights ago. I figured I may as well get out the camera and try to photograph it as part of my Photo-A-Day project. I'm really enjoying how this project gives the incentive to have a play! Anyhow, after 20 tries I got this:

 

I have actually edited this a little - sharpened and cropped. It was OK. I've seen better. But maybe those photos weren't taken with a base model DSLR and cheap lens like mine?! :)

It was fascinating to zoom in on my shot (you can click the above image to zoom in) and make out a number of craters. I then went hunting and learned more about Lunar Craters on Wikipedia. I also discovered that this first full moon was a significant one. In the USA they call it the Wolf Moon and the moon was also the closest it will be to the earth all year. You can read about that on the National Geographic Daily News .

So if you'd like to take a photo of the moon, you can follow these instructions that amazing photographer and all-round wonderful person, Katrina Kennedy, has left on her blog!

Here's what the moon looks like when you let the camera choose the exposure:

I quite liked this, too. You can't make out any details of the moon but it has an atmosphere about it. Perhaps what I need to do is play with High Dynamic Range photography (HDR tutorial, HDR Tutorials Roundup ). Wouldn't that be fun?! It will have to wait for another day (or year ...!).