Full Moon over LA

The full moon last night was supposed to have been the biggest in the Northern Hemisphere in 15 years, and over 30 percent brighter and 14 percent larger than other full moons this year.

The moon above the Los Angeles skyline as depicted above is not actually how the scene appeared. In reality the moon rose about 30 degrees to the right of the skyline. I didn’t have enough time in L.A.’s evening commute to relocate to a new location where the buildings and moon would converge, so I figured I would rediscover an old trick I learned back in the film days.

The photo above is actually a multiple exposure, in which two sequential frames are overlapped in the camera. The illusion was created without Photoshop; in fact the deceiving technique has been around long before the existence of Photoshop. Back when I was using my old manual film camera, I would take a picture, press the film release button, and cock the shutter without actually advancing the film. This would allow me to take two (or more) pictures on a single frame.

NOTE: because the photo has been manipulated (despite the use of Photoshop), I would never consider the image for journalistic publication.

Here’s another try from a different angle.

Here are two of the test pictures, one of the moon only and the other of the skyline only. The photo of the moon was taken with a 300mm f/2.8 + 1.4x extender. The photo of the skyline was taken with a 70-200 f/2.8.