Tugatog, Malabon City

D A T E : MARCH 17, 2013
L O C A T I O N : TUGATOG, MALABON CITY, METRO MANILA, LUZON, PHILIPPINES

C A M E R A : NIKON D90
L E N S : NIKKOR 50MM F/1.8
F I L T E R : NONE
M O U N T : BENRO A-300
L I G H T : AMBIENT
S E T T I N G S : MANUAL MODE | ISO 100 | 10 SEC | F/1.8
P O S T - P R O C E S S I N G N O T E S : CURVES ON TWO STACKED IMAGES

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And the heavens is smiling again tonight.

I have seen a similar spectacle years before but failed to photograph it, having no camera on hand. This time, I made sure I have a souvenir photo as soon as I saw the smiley formation in the sky. I’m not sure if the previous phenomenon is similar to the one I witnessed tonight, but the one prior to this was made possible by the alignment of Venus and Jupiter as eyes and the moon as a smiling mouth.

It was pretty easy to take a photo of this one. I decided to set my aperture to its widest to get bigger looking stars and adjusted my shutter speed accordingly. The hard part was the moon which kept on blowing up, making it look like a full moon instead of a crescent. What I did was take another exposure and underexposed it. I then merged the two photos, and viola, the smile was back on the moon’s face!