It was a painterly kind of morning and I was out early to shoot the supermoon as it was setting. I wanted to catch this lunar phenomenon in the East from the Coachella Valley desert floor with Mt. San Jacinto framing the ethereal background.
Cold winter mornings like this are almost surreal in the California desert near Palm Springs. The solitude is deafening and there is a great sense of the Presence of the Lord. That's why I call these mornings "painterly." It seems as though the Master Artist, God Himself, is painting everything in view, adding color and depth all along the way. For me, it was like Georgia O'Keefe painting with smooth and romantic lines.
And so, I captured images in three brackets of exposure (Automatic Exposure Bracketing = AEB), wanting to pull in any possible detail of the moon along the way.
When I pulled in the images, I selected three of my favorites and processed them with Aurora HDR Pro. I still was not satisfied with the fact I couldn't see any detail from the moon though I had merged the three images. So I selected the darkest of the exposures that had just a hint of detail in the moon and processed it. Then I pasted that image as a layer into the merged image. I moved that layer behind the merged image, then painted in the moon.
I decided that this image would be painterly, just like what I felt when I was out there with the Lord. So I added a Georgia O'Keefe filter from Topaz Impression at 33%. Because it lightened the image more than I wanted, I selected a Rice Paper Vignette from ON1 Software and painted it in at just 50% on the top half of the image and 100% on the landscape portion of the image.
Then, I added the great truth taught in the Word of God that "He Is Always With You" and one of my favorite promises, "I will never fail you, I will never abandon you" (Hebrews 13:5 NLT).
So I pray that you will be encouraged today that the Lord is always with you … He will never fail you or abandon you. God bless you dear friend.
Dear Lord, help me to remember today that You are always with me. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Blessings ♡ Grace
