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.

Day 292: July 14, 2010 - Moonrise over Watchman

by Christian Williams
We sat down by the river and watched the sun setting - which created a beautiful range of colors, from the warm light of day, to the cooler light of dusk.

Day 127: January 30, 2005 - Morning Moonlight

by Christian Williams
I woke early and raced out to Zion to catch the sunrise, and decided instead to take a picture of the setting moon just before dawn.

Day 87: December 21, 2004 - Marvelous Moonlight

by Christian Williams
Zion is a wonderful place to walk around underneath the light of the moon. Moonlight reflects off the towering white canyon walls and you can see almost as clearly as day. If you stick around even later, millions of stars come out to remind you what the street lights of the big city are hiding.

Day 65: November, 29 2004 - Moon Over Zion

by Christian Williams
One of the great sights of Zion is when you are coming down the switchbacks from east Zion into the main canyon and you see this magnificent wall of mountains, West Temple, Towers of the Virgin, and the Altar of Sacrifice. This scene was especially great today as the full moon from the night before was setting behind these cliffs. I used my 500mm lens, to get a great close-up of these iconic peaks, which had the effect of enlarging the moon against the backdrop of the mountains.