Night Photography Assignment 2: The Moon

So I want to keep up with my weekly assignments for my night photography course. This week I was having difficulty coming up with a theme. I thought I would try light painting as my kids opened up a bunch of glo-sticks on Friday night but my shots weren't too exciting. Our class instructor mentioned the moon in an email on Saturday. I went ahead and changed subjects and these are my better shots. Some notes on these photos: I spent a lot of time on the tree photo. I attempted to back light the tree by using a flash (my little elph camera worked fine) but found that it didn't create too much of an effect. I am surprisingly pleased with the moon ring shot. I wasn't too sure how the moon halo would come out in the photo but along with the light burst from the moon, it works as a good photo. As for the moon photo, this proved to be quite difficult. I wanted to get as much of the shadows and texture of the moon without losing too much of the brightness. After adjusting aperture and exposure many, many times, this made the cut, although I still think it could have been brighter.

26 second exposure, f/7.1, 23mm, ISO 400
51 second exposure, f/13, 21mm, ISO 200
1/50 second exposure, f/18, 280mm, ISO 200