LPM feature: Juniper Moon

[MattBurt]

A shot I took a few years ago was put in the "Wall of Fame" section of this month's Landscape Photography Magazine. I added it to their Flickr group and that counts as a submission.
I had a different image in mind when I went out that evening but found this tree as I was finding my spot for moonrise at our local recreation area, Hartman Rocks. After shooting the moon closer to the mountains from a higher point I got down into a little ravine to get the angle right for this alignment. I had to back into some brush and contort a little to line it up. I wanted to focus stack this but the moon was moving too quickly to do it with my old manual focus lens (that incidentally went out of production when I was in 7th grade).
Despite the softness of the background I liked how the shot came out and I'm apparently not the only one. Always fun to see my efforts get appreciated out there!

[francois]

Superb and unique… What a stunning shot. Great story also.
Bravo, Matt.

[Paulo Bizarro]

Great shot, saw it in this month's issue of the LPM.

[David Eckels]

Superb and unique… What a stunning shot. Great story also.
Bravo, Matt.

👍🏻

[Rajan Parrikar]

Beautiful. The background softness doesn't matter, probably even adds to the image by signaling depth. Only nit I have is the fringing around the moon. (Quick fix: make a new layer, add Gaussian Blur (~5 px or experiment with it), set the layer blend mode to Colour.)

[petermfiore]

Were Luna and Frida present for the making of this wonderful photo?

Peter

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

Yup, that's a doozy 

Dave

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Stunning!!!

[Arlen]

Congratulations, Matt. It is a really excellent capture.

[MattBurt]

Were Luna and Frida present for the making of this wonderful photo?

Peter

I think Luna was but Frida generally stays close to home.

Thanks everyone  for all the comments!

Rajan, I'll check that technique out.