Note: this photo was published in a Jul 24, 2009 blog titled "<a href="http://www.earthsky.org/tonightpost/moon-phases/full-moon" rel="nofollow">Full moon</a>." It was also published in a Dec 6, 2009 blog titled "<a href="http://davemartin.blogspot.com/2009/12/business-world-is-full-of-two-kinds-of.html" rel="nofollow">The business world is full of two kinds of people—builders and traders</a>." And it was published in a Dec 31, 2009 blog titled "<a href="http://mashable.com/2009/12/31/blue-moon-2009/" rel="nofollow">Once in a Blue Moon: Be Sure to Look Up This New Year’s Eve</a>."

Moving into 2010, the photo was published in a Jan 29, 2010 blog titled "<a href="http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2010/01/friday-recap-wolf-moon-edition/" rel="nofollow">Friday Recap: Wolf Moon Edition</a>," which discussed the "wolf moon" phenomenon that occurred on Jan 29th. Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with this photo -- which was taken roughly six months earlier. Indeed, I had considered photographing the "real" wolf moon, but by the time I became aware of it, it was already high in the sky and no longer interesting from a photographic perspective. Interestingly, it was also situated quite a lot further north than this particular photo -- in which the moon had risen right above 96th Street, and illuminated part of the entrance into Central Park...

These photos were taken a couple days after my first HDR efforts on the 4th of July weekend, in an attempt to get a decent image of the full moon rising over the east side of Manhattan, from the terrace of my apartment over on the Upper West SIde. Not particularly memorable or spectacular results, but it gave me a chance to experiment with some of the parameters and settings in the Photomatix program I'm using to merge/combine the HDR shots.

Full disclosure: in addition to the HDR shots, I also took some "traditional" shots of the full moon a little later, after it had risen higher in the sky; these were taken with a manual setting of f/11 and 1/250th second (as recommended by Scott Kelby, in his Digital Photography books). I then used Adobe Photoshop Elements to extract just the moon out of that photo, and pasted it into this HDR composition in a separate "layer", which I was then able to enlarge to a ridiculous extent.

The original HDR image had a much more interesting orange-colored moon ... but when I tried to blow it up to a larger size, using Photoshop, the edges were so rough and grainy that it was embarrassing. So I think I'll stick with this composite, for better or worse...

I tried an HDR (high dynamic range) photo once a year ago, but for some reason never pursued it. But it seems that more of and more of the "interesting" photos that I see on Flickr are HDR shots, so I decided to give it another try. The initial set of photos were taken from the rooftop of my apartment building at sunset, on the Sunday evening of 4th of July weekend.