Next May, I’m returning to Bolivia. I’ve timed the trip so we will have the full moon on the Salar de Uyuni. This means we will experience moon-set and also moon-rise while on the salt flat.

In general, the moon is often far too small to make a dent on your landscape photography if shooting wide angles or even standard focal length lenses. I believe (but it’s been so long now) that in the picture above made in 2012, that I used the equivalent of a 75mm lens for this. Maybe more.

The other thing to consider is that the moon is a day lit subject. What you are seeing is the sun hitting it directly. This means the contrast range is out-of-this-world and impossible to capture the moons surface when the light levels are low. In the image above, I waited until the light was towards the brighter side of sunrise, so that I could still capture it.

The last thing to consider is that the moon is a moving subject. I found shooting over a few seconds would blur it.

I think what I ended up doing was shooting wide open, and also using a grad to avoid the moon burning out in the exposure.

The rest of the image is just ‘creative interpretation’ or ‘digital-darkroom skills’. Something of which I am very big on.

I’ll be returning to Bolivia next May, and currently have just one space left for the tour.