This is last month’s full moon, rising above the dome of the Greek Orthodox church across the street from me. I remember taking a similar picture a couple of years ago, and it turns out the surrounding trees have grown a lot since then. There are now only one or two very narrow sightlines that allow a picture like this. Everything else looking in this direction is blocked by trees, fences, and light poles.

By the way, this is a composite picture, like pretty much every picture of the full moon. If I expose this shot correctly to get the dome and the cross, the moon is just a blown-out white blur—which means the best time to take moon pictures is just before sunset, when both the moon and the terrestrial surroundings are about equally bright. Unfortunately, that usually kills the color. It’s always something, isn’t it? In this case, I took separate exposures of the dome and the moon and then overlaid them in Photoshop.

July 27, 2018 — Irvine, California

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