Fauxto Friday - "White Pine Moon"

I’ve been fascinated by this beautiful orb for as long as I can remember, especially when it’s full…it is extremely photogenic, and my favorite angle is just as the moon rises and makes its appearance on the horizon. Because I live in Illinois, where Mother Nature is never sure which season it is and throws ALL the weather at us all the time, I don’t always get the opportunity to shoot the full moon. So when the weather cooperates and gives me a clear view, I put “a few clicks on the old odometer”…or in this case, shutter count. (couldn’t resist a Best in Show reference! 😆)

Almost all of my moon pictures are taken from the end of my driveway, which can get boring… seeing the same shot of the moon hovering above a field. For the most recent full moon, I wanted to do something a little different. I set up my tripod behind a white pine tree and framed the moon among the needles. With the focus on my Nikon set to Dynamic Area-AF, I put the center dot directly on the needles hanging down in front of the moon. The resulting snap came out quite nicely, I especially liked the glow surrounding the needles…

…but the moon just looked like a solid white light. No depth or shadows or detail to show that it was, in fact, the full moon and not someone pointing a flashlight in my face. I was going to need another shot of the moon to layer over this one, so I reset the focus point and placed it directly in the center of the moon and SNAP!

Now that I had the detail and depth that I was looking for, it was time to start the Fauxto Process. 

To begin, I used the Quick Selection tool to select only the moon in the Detail Layer. Once I finished adjusting the Radius and Feathering refinements in Select and Mask mode, I copied the selection and pasted it into the Bright Layer.

You’ll notice the moon in the Detail Layer is much smaller in diameter than the one in the Bright  Layer…with the Detail Layer selected, I used Transform mode to increase the scale until it was the same size as the Bright moon. Now on to the real work!

With the Bright layer selected and moved to the front/top, it was time to start erasing that moon out of the picture…this step would take a whole lot of erasing and a whole lot of time. Carefully, and using various sized brushes in the Eraser Tool, I removed the Bright moon to reveal the Detail moon below.

Once I was satisfied with the erasure, I increased the Brightness of the Detail Layer and used the Blur tool to soften the edges. Flipping back to the Bright Layer, I used the Camera Raw filter to lighten the shadowing and increase the saturation of the blue levels.

And there you have it! Another Fauxto Finish!