The Bakers Dozen Full Moon Collage

This is a project that I've been working on for many months now, longer than even getting my site up and running. I worked all of 2009 to capture the images needed for this and now will share with you all. I present my "Full Moons of 2009" collage in miniature form.

Using my 1000mm lens and 10 megapixel XTi, I was able to capture all 13 full moons of last year. There were 13 because of the BLUE MOON on New Year's Eve and it was truly special. The version I present for sale here is actually a smaller than my original creation which is a 40"x60" 300DPI master that I intend to print at 48"x72" or 4foot by 6foot, as soon as I can find a print house capable of handling such a monster size print. But for now I present to you my lunar collage which will show that while full moons may not have the awesome crater and surface detail you see during other phases, they are still magnificent, and very different from each other.

I have chosen to include text below each moon to let you know what you are looking at, as well as to provide a reference for how the moon changes size from month to month, throughout the year. Each row of text is exactly the same distance below the center line of each row of moons. If you study the center column of moon images you can see how the moon edge is closer and farther and then closer to the line of text. Looking at the difference between the WOLF moon and STURGEON moon and then the BLUE moon you can see that it really does changes size. Or maybe I should restate that, the moon doesn't change size, but it does move closer and further from the earth throughout the year, which makes the apparent size to us change here on the surface of mother Earth. I actually never really believed it was visible until I made this collage.

I almost didn't get all the images needed to create this print. As you can see the PINK full moon is shrouded in a cloudy haze. Even though the full moon is usually bright enough to shine through any cloud cover, the skies were nearly overcast this night. It took a lot of time and patience and repeated journeys outside with camera and tripod before I could catch this with enough detail.

I was really nervous about how this would look in final print form. I've attended a few online classes and webinars about color management of photos and prints and was worried that the cloudy haze would show nasty artifacts. But I am extremely pleased to report that everything looks great in the 24"x36" print I just received from BayPhoto this afternoon. Now I just need to work on finding a place that can print this at 48"x72" and after that an appropriate place to hang it :)

I have included two versions in my gallery as noted by the titles under the main image on the right. One has BRIGHT text which stands out more, while the other has FADED text which basically disappears until you get within 2 feet or so of it. Ok, this post is long enough, but I'll gladly answer any questions you have, and now need to start working on my blog entries for each month of moon pics for 2009.