I've been working to improve night time shooting, including city scapes and the moon. Thoughts on this shot of Washington, DC with rising full/blood moon (taken in September 2019)? Anything I could do to improve composition and/or editing? This is two shots composited - one for the main cityscape and a second just for the moon.
The moon seems well exposed, and it doesn’t overpower the scene, which is good. However, the city is still far too underexposed. This particular scene looks a little challenging to capture, as you have some super bright spots and some super dark spots. On top of that, I’m not huge on the amount of black featureless sky. So I’d recommend one of the following.
1) shoot a few different exposures for city and blend them, to ensure everything is well exposed. The problem with this one, is you still end up with a black featureless sky.
Or
2) arrive a little bit earlier and capture the city closer to the end of blue hour, you can then add the moon in post. The city should be a little more evenly lit, allowing for the camera to expose the scene a little more evenly. This should also allow you to capture a little more colour or detail in the sky, such as clouds.
You could also tilt the camera down a little lower to add more of the city and less sky, if that’s possible.
I hope that helps.
Thanks for the comment - totally agree regarding underexposure of the city. I definitely should have taken some shots earlier to blend in. Agree also about too much black negative space in the sky - although would need to add something in post, perhaps some stars w a sky replacement or maybe clouds or something to add some additional interest and fill the otherwise blank space. Tried playing with the angle, but from this particular vantage point there were other foreground buildings and obstacles in the way between camera and DC mall that prevented capturing more of the city and less sky (took the shot from a tall rooftop in Arlington at 200mm). Might do a bit more work in post to see if I can make some further improvements.