Courthouse Full Moon

It was the late ninety's when I first entered the photography fine art print market and for me the catalyst was the advent of Hale-Bopp Comet. The thought of photographing it filled me with ambition and inspiration. I was a carpenter at the time so after working a full day doing construction, I would venture out into the desert night armed with a camera and excitement to capture images of the amazing Hale-Bopp Comet above Sedona Arizona's majestic landscapes. I went out almost every night for about three weeks and after a short learning curve ended up with a wonderful collection of photos. This was enough to get my work into numerous local businesses selling my photo products.

So as time went on it didn't take me long to figure out that Hale-Bopp was kind of like a fad and that its popularity would in time fade. Basically if I wanted to stay in business the next thing I had to do was get beautiful, marketable images of Sedona and the southwest.

I had the idea that landscapes with full moons would be quite appealing, so I set out to find out through experimentation. I started working with double exposures using full moons. This was done by opening the shutter once to capture the landscape and then again at night to expose the moon in a select spot on the landscape. This was done on film and is a little tricky.

Today's image Courthouse Full Moon was one of my first successful attempts at this. It was one of my best selling images for a couple of years until the lab scratched and ruined the negative. So a few days ago I scanned the neg and did a digital repair of the scratches and to my delight I have revived this fine image after many years.