I was standing outside and thought this would make for a great photo. I’m not disappointed with it.
The following evening…
Liz and I went for a late night ride and spotted the moon rising just above the horizon. The Strawberry Moon was last night, June 21st, but it still looked full this evening and had a pink hue to it due to being so close to the horizon.
If you know me, you know I don’t pass up a good photo opportunity. I was very impressed with the sight in front of us and was wondering how I was going to find a safe spot to capture it when Liz started flashing her brights at me. I pulled over and she said she wished we could get a picture of it. –Wish granted my dear, wish granted. Love you baby.
Full disclosure, this photo has some trickery to it. This is actually three photos morphed together. I took a photo of the moon with Liz and I standing side by side looking at the bikes. Then Liz took a photo of me sitting on my bike, and I took a photo of her on her bike.
After matching the second and third photos together as best I could in composition and scale, I removed my bike with AI tools, and then with the photo of me in a layer underneath the photo of Liz, I “painted” a transparent hole into the top layer revealing the bottom layer. And just like that, we were both on our bikes.
I enhanced the moon’s texture by laying the first photo under the latter two. In that first photo, I changed the settings on my iPhone to dim the lighting and maximize the texture on the moon. With that photo underneath the other two, all I had to do was make the top photos transparent so I could adjust the bottom one in composition and scale, then “paint” a hole so the best version of the moon could show through.
When I was satisfied with that look, I flattened the image, then further enhanced it by removing trash on the side of the road, light refractions that distracted from the scene, and removed some of the noise that is typically present in night shots.
The bigger story here is that we had a very nice ride together. Her CanAm has a performance muffler that is considerably louder but higher pitched than my Harley and when you pair them together, it’s an interesting sound. You might call us the Thunder Duo!