Image and video by Serge Ramelli. Used with permission.
The brightest Supermoon phenomenon (since 1948) happened just two days ago and Serge Ramelli has created a composite image of the awe-worthy Supermoon rising from the night skyline of downtown Los Angeles, with a step by step tutorial video on how he achieved his results from start to finish.
Serge utilized a 70-300mm lens to shoot the Supermoon, hence he was shooting from quite a far distance away from the city to be able to use the telephoto compression effect. Consequently this resulted in relatively large size of the moon in comparison to the city buildings.
Considering the Supermoon was much brighter than the city lights, Serge employed HDR technique by capturing exposure bracketing of three frames at -2EV, 0EV and + 2EV to maximize the dynamic range he obtained in his photographs. Therefore, the bright Supermoon was well balanced against the darker city lights without the moon being overexposed and still maintaining high level of clarity, revealing details of the craters. As the moon rose, he repeated the same process for different positions of it in the sky. Photoshop was used to merge the HDR shots, balancing exposures and finishing off with the compositing of different moons positions together in the sky in one final image.
We know that this useful tutorial came in a little late, since you will have to wait until November 25, 2034 for the next Supermoon. However, it is still an informative, inspiring, and well put together video tutorial which all of us can benefit from. You can watch the Youtube video below.