Deep Blue (See?) - Criticism and a Technical Question

[elemental]

I was out shooting last night at my usual time of and managed to set this silhouette scene up. I'm curious to see what all of you think, because I do a fair amount of work experimenting with these after-dark blue tones, and I wonder if anyone else cares for it. Unfortunately, it lost some of it's depth in the compression process, but imagine it just a touch deeper in the blues and you're there:

Now the technical question: Is there any way yo prevent the moon from getting so blown out that it becomes a misshapen blob? This is a roughly 400% crop (I know, but it's noticeable well below 100%), and it's clearly way overexposed with a bad case of highlight purple fringing. All I can think of is to exposure blend, but even that seems like it would be a little tricky.

Please critique/tip away. I'm interested to see if anyone else finds this appealing.

 

[tirediron]

Neat image; I like the way the light and the moon compliment each other.
To answer your technical question, I think the only way to do this, given the dynamic range of the image, would be to do an HDR Merge; If you were to shoot 10-15 images covering the whole exposure range, I think you'd be able to come up wtih some really neat combinations.

 

[kundalini]

I like the composition.

There are many threads here about exposing for the moon. Basically you have to consider the moon is as bright as the sun when exposing. Try f/8 to f/16 at 1/125 to 1/250. Search for moon threads by member astrostu.

BTW, your lamp post is blown out as well.

 

[icassell]

I love those early-evening blue skies too ... they are so hard to get right

 

[elemental]

I like the composition.

There are many threads here about exposing for the moon. Basically you have to consider the moon is as bright as the sun when exposing. Try f/8 to f/16 at 1/125 to 1/250. Search for moon threads by member astrostu.

BTW, your lamp post is blown out as well.

Right. Correctly exposing the lamp or the moon would have rather ruined the silhouette. The lamp I can work with because there's no fringing or blown edges though. Short of exposure blending or HDR there's no way to have my (sky) cake and eat it (and the lamp and the moon) too, right?

 

[Parkerman]

Right. Correctly exposing the lamp or the moon would have rather ruined the silhouette. The lamp I can work with because there's no fringing or blown edges though. Short of exposure blending or HDR there's no way to have my (sky) cake and eat it (and the lamp and the moon) too, right?

Well... You could do an HDR.. but not the normal way.. Like, you could take a shot exposed for the sky, a shot exposed for the lap, and a shot for the moon. Then simply go into photoshop.. lay them on top of each other, set up layer mask.. and go at it erasing away.