Day 295: July 17, 2005 - Moonlight Reflections in Zion

by Christian Williams
It was a marvelous night for a walk in the moonlight. This picture is interesting for a few reasons. First, the moon has such a bright aura, it looks like the afternoon sun, except it's clearly not bright enough to chase away the darkness of night. There's a nice analogy in there somewhere.

The next interesting thing is the reflection of the moon, complete with the shadow of the tree that appears in the lower left corner of the image. This results from the moon reflecting on the lens itself, and the reflection is picked up by the image-sensor in the camera. Notice how the details of the moon are exposed so you can see them in this reflection, but not in the moon itself. This is because some of the light gets lost as the image is reflected, which exposes the reflection properly, while the moon itself is overexposed with no details. An otherwise boring photo, made interesting to me by these two details.


by Christian Williams
The 500mm lens I used in this shot is about 2 feet long and almost gives me the illusion of being able to reach out and touch the details on the moon's surface.