For a long time, I wanted to capture a full moon. The question was, "How will I compose an interesting image of a full, round, and white balloon?" One night in November 2023, arriving home, I saw this beautiful moon over my head. I wondered how I could compose an interesting image. Suddenly, I remembered a leafless (Hawthorn) tree on my neighbor's property containing small red fruits. I thought composing an image with the moon captured between the tree's branches and red fruits would be interesting. Immediately, I remembered a picture that I had published on my LPM Portfolio using a flash.

So I went inside the house to get my camera and the flash. My experience with the moon revealed that spot metering offers the best results. To achieve ETTR, I overexposed by 2.3 stops. I had a headlamp to see the branches and red fruits. I used my 420mm lens to compose the image handheld. When I triggered the shutter, the flash illuminated the branches and red fruits in the foreground! They are so close that they are out of focus. I was happy to capture this visual delight!

In postprocessing, I had to crop the image to remove the excess red fruits and branches. Lightroom (LR) does an excellent job of lighting adjustments. The illuminated branches by the flash were darkened. Also, LR did well in exporting and enlarging the final image. I am planning for the next full moon…