Blue Moon
updated: Aug 03, 2012, 8:51 AM

By Steve McGovern

Full moon out there. First of two full moons this month. Won't happen again until 2015. Actually, I think it was full on Wednesday night, but it still looks full so I went out to take some pictures of moonrise. I was standing at the slough in Goleta, pointing toward where the moon was going to rise. I knew I was pointing in the right direction since the moon pretty much always rises in the East, but what I wasn't sure of was when it might rise. Sure enough, it rose in the east again tonight, just after sunset, and when it cleared the fog layer, I started snapping shots. It got darker, and I took more pictures. Finally after about 125 shots with two cameras and three lenses, I got cold, so I quit and went home.

When I downloaded the pictures, I found I had 125 pictures of the moon. 125 almost identical pictures of the moon. Only difference was some of them were closer, some farther. Some darker, some lighter. Some very grainy, some only a little grainy. Many out of focus. I had only one thing to do: edit. So I did. In iPhoto and in Photoshop. What follows are four examples of playing with light, color and composition. All the same moon, from the same place on earth, but different looks.

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