Nature Photography How To

It's not necessary to wait for a rare “super moon” to enhance the beauty of landscape photos with a soft lunar glow. In this quick tutorial from Toma Bonciu, you’ll learn when and how to do just that.

Bonciu is a professional Romanian nature and adventure photographer whose helpful tutorials we post frequently. In the six-minute video below, he uses stunning images and self taught knowledge to reveal his favorite techniques for capturing the moon when shooting late-day and evening landscape photos.

The tutorial begins with a simple primer on achieving proper exposures, while balancing the brightness of the moon with the darker surrounding sky and foreground. Then Bonciu moves into the real meat of the tutorial, which involves composition and other artistic considerations.

Bonciu explains his approach like this: “Photos with just the moon in the frame are a cliché, and because of that I want to capture the moon with the landscape.” Unlike other methods that involve shooting and merging multiple images to balance the scene, Bonciu prefers to capture a killer photograph in the camera with just one shot.

He explains how to make a photograph with details in both the moon and surrounding landscape, why sunrises and sunsets are a great time to shoot, and much, much more. Watch the video to see how it’s done.

There is more helpful advice on Bonciu’s YouTube channel and in his earlier tutorial with 15 tips for shooting epic winter landscape photos. You may also want to check out our earlier piece explaining how to make great photos of a “super moon” the next time one occurs.