New to this forum, would love to hear your comments on my photo - dusk with moon

[Kathy O]

would love to hear your comments on this photo, very new to photography and would love any suggestions on how to make my photos better. Thanks.

[Donald]

Kathy

On this sort of shot, I would normally like to keep some more detail in the darker areas. I woukld tend to do that through the use of Graduated Neutral Density (GND) Filters that I balanced up the dynamic range of light in the image. This would have necessitated an over all loner exposure thus allowing more light from the foreground to get onto the sensor, but still keeping the same amount of light from the sky to get through.

I know Dave has already commented on one of your other images, pointing out that maybe you were trying something that was beyond the capability of your camera. It's a bit the same with this one, I think. The camera you have is capable of helping your create magnificent images. But you need to be able to work within its limitations. Ask it to go beyond what it can cope with and it isn't going to help you nail that super shot.

Also, I think with something like this, we have to ask ourselves when we're composing it if the overall image is going to enough of interest in it. What if you cropped this into a portrait format, so that the moon lay on the left-hand vertical third of a rule of thirds grid. I think that might give you a much more engaging image. It would cut more than half of the frame which, I suggest, is not really adding anything to the image.

I hope you don't mind, but to show you an example of the sort of thing I'm meaning .............



What you can also see with this, is that the moon now fills a greater proportion of the image than in your original, thus putting more attention onto it.

[Kathy O]

Thanks so much for the example, what you did makes sense.