Moonbows...You're going to want to see this

[Marlton Mom]

Here is a 3 part link to a fantastic story on photographing Moonbows.

LINK 1 is a link to the MSNBC travel section story that has a blurb about Moonbows and directs you to a youtube site that has a Video about Moonbows.

LINK 2 is taking you to Youtube where you will see a video produced by Yosemite Nature Notes entitled "Moonbows episode 15"

LINK 3 is taking you to a video that will show you HOW they made this video and all the considerations that are necessary for shooting this subject under the relevant conditions.


Link one serves a purpose, link 2 is fascinating and link 3 is what will have most of us here of the Photography thread DROOLING!

Each of the videos is about 7 minutes long so give yourself some time to watch them.


LINK 1 http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/13/7075756-somewhere-under-the-moonbow

LINK 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_68ytOYnTvs&feature=player_embedded

LINK 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbFGzfu04XE&annotation_id=annotation_229969&feature=iv


So now we discuss..... Anyone doing this? Got Pictures? Tell us how the Moon played a role in some of your Disney (or other) pictures and post the pix.

~Marlton Mom

 

[KrysiaG]

I have several pictures from Cumberland Falls Moonbow - it's about 3.5-4 hours south of me in Cincinnati
http://parks.ky.gov/findparks/resortparks/cf/

I'll dig up my pictures.

Moonbow
Known as the "Niagara of the South," the 125-foot wide curtain of water is dramatic day or night. But it's only at night during a full moon that you can see the moonbow, a phenomenon not found anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere

2011 Moonbow Dates
January 17-18-19-20-21
February 16-17-18-19-20
March 17-18-19-20-21
April 16-17-18-19-20
May 15-16-17-18-19
June 13-14-15-16-17
July 13-14-15-16-17
August 11-12-13-14-15
September 10-11-12-13-14
October 10-11-12-13-14
November 8-9-10-11-12
December 8-9-10-11-12

Google images:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cumb...v&sa=X&ei=uiUfTuvXK5OmsAKG4YWUAw&ved=0CC8QsAQ

I honestly didn't know it was found anywhere else! Thanks for the post!

 

[zackiedawg]

Very cool stuff - I'd love to photograph one, but never have so far. FYI - the Cumberland Falls one should probably say "the only RELIABLY OCCURRING moonbow in the western hemisphere"...it's not the only one by any measure, just the only one that can be fairly regularly relied upon. I've seen one at Yosemite Falls in California, but I didn't photograph it - it was years ago, before the digital age. I'd imagine anyplace with heavy spray from the falls and a clear night and good full moonlight could potentially have a moonbow - something about the Cumberland's location, landscape, spray direction, etc must make that one more reliable and recurring.

As for the moon at Disney, I have dozens of shots involving the moon - it's a favorite subject of mine to include when photographing various things at Disney.

 

[Marlton Mom]

What's that did you say? Did 'someone' ask how the moon played a role in some of their photos??

Well I can answer that question!

On my last trip to Disney World in June of this year I had the great fortune to be photographing at night with the full moon rising.... after dark and with virtually clear skies.

There is no way that you can plan for this. Sure you can plan a trip during a certain phase of the moon's rise but it gets tricky when you have to consider weather and also the Direction where the moon will rise and also the TIME of the rising.

I would think that you would have to have access to the parks 24-7-365 to really compensate for all those factors. That's why I say with my "Moon shots" at Disney I was exceptionally lucky.

We'll start with this shot:


Moon over Tomorrowland by Marlton Mom, on Flickr

What we have here is Tomorrowland, after the parks closed and I was lingering, with no people in the shot and the MOON is low enough and in a good spot to get an angle where I could include it in my shot. Notice I had to move to the side to get the angle. I can move but I can't move the moon.

This shot is really right on the edge of not happening when you consider the clouds moving in, the fact that the parks are closed and it's time to leave. The moon was at a great height, not too low so you wouldn't see it and not way too high that I would have to change the composition of the picture to compensate for the distance above The Tomorrowland facade.

I love the fact that the moon plays a role as a character in this shot. So much of Tomorrowland is about our growing up with Space exploration and the moon launches as a harbinger of the "future". It's only appropriate that the moon is a part of Tomorrowland.

I really wanted to photograph Tomorrowland on this trip. During my last trip I only had one night at MK and my batteries died shortly after I got my TTA shot. I was crushed! There was so much more I wanted to shoot and my camera was dead! In the time period between trips I made a concerted effort to really learn how to shoot using manual controls to try and optimize my exposures. I believe that with today's DSLR cameras, the Auto setting is a disaster and it promises something that it will never be able to deliver if you want your photography to transcend from snap shot to art.

When I was at Disney last, in Dec 2009, I had a huge problem with blowing out the night shots due to the super bright lighting that illuminates the building facades. It wasn't so much a camera problem but more like a comprehension problem on my part. I had to find a way to balance the high lights and low lights on my night shots. This year I came armed with a wider knowledge base, primarily concerning the controls of my camera. Some people like to compensate for these problems using a technique called HDR photography. This entails taking 3 (more or less) exposures and combining the best light ranges of each one into 1 image using software. I'm not there yet but I'd like to be... and one day I will. It occurred to me that I should probably concentrate on getting my original exposures closer to the correct exposures rather than trying to make software compensate for some unimaginable exposure blunder on my part.

The whole time I was shooting the night exposures for this trip I was shooting raw and I was paying special attention to not blowing out the high lights. I found that it was better if I underexposed a picture and the way that I was doing that was to lower the ISO on my Nikon D90 to it's lowest possible setting. I'm not talking about 200 ISO which is the low setting on the D90 but a 3 step exposure compensation to an approximate ISO of 160.

I processed the raw file with a bump up in the fill light and the mandatory color saturation increases (due to shooting in Raw) and I got this:


Main Street theater by Marlton Mom, on Flickr

No HDR needed but the Moon is over exposed because the moon is deceptively bright. I can live with that because the exposure necessary for the moon and the building facade are too far apart for one shot. Perhaps with HDR I could have gotten the best of both but that's for the future.

As you can see from this picture I had to shoot from one side to avoid the distortion of using a super wide angle lens. I'd like to say that I thought enough ahead of time to put the moon on the correct side of the flag to make it appear that the moon (and not the spot light on the roof out of sight) is illuminating the flag, but that didn't happen. Security was very kindly on my tail and the rule is that once you move forward toward the entrance of the park you can't go back,. (at least that's what I experienced...)

So again, here is my friend for this trip the Moon, nice and low and full and and rising in the right direction. It probably won't surprise you to learn that these shots were taken on the same night approximately 35 minutes apart.

What Luck!

Marlton Mom

 

[zackiedawg]

Ah...I guess I could have actually SHARED some moon photos too! Sorry, I wasn't reading closely enough. Indeed, my proximity to the parks helps give me a better chance of being up at Disney during various moon phases, and that has helped me get some moon shot opportunities. On some very cloudy, overcast nights, I like to include a moon in the frame of building and architecture shots with the clouds around or streaking, for a little more atmosphere - I tend to be at Epcot the most during the evening, so that's the place I've caught it the most often:

Even when it's really obscured by clouds, I like the way it illuminates the sky and clouds and adds some mood:

This was a special moment, that was perfectly timed - coming out of dinner at Marrakesh, the crescent moon was a narrow sliver in the late dusk sky with Venus paired right next to it - a classic image in the Muslim world and represented on flags - it was special to get the opportunity to catch it right over the Moroccan architecture. To get it with more emotion, I took two shots - this is the actual location exactly where the moon and star appeared to the eye, but I used my ultrazoom camera to zoom in to 420mm for a closeup of the moon, then back out for a shot to include the building (in which the moon and star were really tiny)...then layered the two for the larger moon effect:

I caught it once sitting nicely over the Tomorrowland gate, which was cute - I didn't even intend to take a moon shot that night:

At the resorts I've gotten a couple of cool moon moments, where they were sitting at just the right spot in the sky to include in a composition:

 

[PrincessInOz]

We were lucky enough to be in Yosemite in 1990 when the full moon hit Yosemite Falls. DH was the photographer in those days and using film (ahhhh...brings back memories of the nostalgic sound of a film winding over to the next frame).

We have a shot of a moonbow over the Falls somewhere in the piles of printed photographs somewhere. I'm going to see if I can find it, scan it and see how it comes out for posting (might only take me 5 years to find the pictures, but I know I can do it).

Actually, it probably might be quicker for me to plan another trip out to Yosemite, wait for a blue moon and take the shot myself.

Disney pictures or otherwise with a moon?

I took this one in January 2011 after watching World of Colour. I'd deliberately lingered back DCA after WoC so that I could grab some shots without people in the frame. The moon just happened to be in the right spot. It just makes the Grizzly Bear seem more alive; like it's looking or talking to the moon.

I also like this wider shot....Full Moon over Grizzly Bear Mountain, High and Dry.

This one is a night view of Melbourne in March, which is the Moomba festival time. Moomba is an aboriginal word that means "Let's get together and have fun". I think it was the first time I'd pulled my UWA lens out at night.

This shot would have been taken all of 5 minutes (tops) after the one above.

Personally, I prefer the shot with the moon in the sky. It just seems a better balanced picture (to me).

 

[Marlton Mom]

Justin, you have so many awesome moon pictures that I can't even pick a favorite. It's like opening a box of of chocolates and you can't decide which one is the most delicious.

The thing that amazes me about the moon is how with the addition of the clouds it can take on a very artistic life of it's own.

Princess, The bear shot is so appropriate! He is definitely reacting to the moon! I love the Melbourne shot too. That was a great catch.

Thanks for posting, everybody

Marlton Mom

 

[boufa]

Here is an actual moonbow from Yosemite. We overheard the ranger while we were visiting mention that this was one of only 2 or 3 times a year that such a effect occurs. Funny thing is that every location that gets moonbows claims its the only one.

The first photo is edited for color, saturation and exposure. The second photo is completely unaltered. It was near pitch black out that night, only moon light.

 

[MoondancePocahontas]

Pretty pictures!!!