Turn That Super Moon Photo into Something Creative

Now that the Super Moon has come and gone, just about every photographer has a bunch of great moon shots sitting on their hard drive. With help from Andrei Oprinca over at PSDbox.com, you can turn those images into creative graphic designs for various uses. I turned mine into cell phone wallpapers and gave them to friends and family.

It seems like a couple times per year, the full moon is a once-in-a-lifetime, closer-than-it-will-be-for-decades event. The up side is social media being flooded with countless creative attempts to capture the moon, which are getting better and better, some taking months of research and planning to pull off. My favorite one this year was shot by the amazing adventure photographer Chris Burkard. Shot in my favorite national park, Joshua Tree, Burkard captured someone walking along a highline just as the moon was rising. I can't even imagine the planning that must have gone into this photo.

This year I had planned on getting out and trying to capture the moonrise in a creative way, possibly with the Boston skyline involved. I found the perfect location and everything, but ended up staying home all weekend with a cold. I did manage to get out of bed and set my tripod up on the porch to get a decent shot so I wouldn't feel like I missed out on the "once-in-a-lifetime event."

After I posted the photo on social media, a friend asked about using the image on his cell phone, which gave me the idea to make a few wallpaper images with it. Oprinca has a great tutorial on manipulating silhouettes to create interesting graphics, which I drew from heavily to make several different designs using a few photos I've taken, some Photoshop brushes, and free clipart. They may not be the amazing new portfolio photos I had hoped to shoot, but every time I look at my phone, I'm pretty pleased with how it looks.