This Evening's Moon

Today was a beautiful sunny day for a change! The sky was crystal clear and you could see for miles. This has not happened in such a long time that I actually felt as though I was in a foreign land!

After shooting a few quick snapshots of our visiting garter snake (previous post), I noticed the moon in the sky. The moon was behind some branches with some wisps of very small clouds in the sky around it. Naturally, I couldn't resist shooting a few photos of this half moon in the twilight blue sky.

My plan was to shoot a color version of this moon so I could capture the twilight blue sky so that is how I set all the settings on my camera... I propped myself against a lamp post... and fired a few shots. It seemed as though I shot a few decent shots which captured some nice detail on the moon while still retaining the twilight blue sky. 

As I was processing this color shot of the moon (using my digital darkroom...  my computer), I accidentally selected a quick conversion to black and white. Although the image is the same exact image, the image took on a much more dramatic look when I eliminated color and it is impossible to tell that the resulting image was shot in blue skies. I do like that the tree branches are still showing in this black and white version even though this version is darker and moodier. Also, there are still traces of the faint clouds visible in this black and white version.

It is always interesting to show variations of the same image but especially so when the results contrast each other so noticeably.  So, here is the black and white version of the same shot...