A nice combo of crimes against the sky.

Though what it really needs is a few jet vapour trails, preferably with a jet in shot!

Perhaps try setting the camera to manual focus and a plausible distance - I almost feel sorry for auto-focus trying to make sense of what it’s seeing in those circumstances!

But a good experiment to try.

In passing, since you are learning about RAW format processing, you can do some quite extreme things to the luminance/histogram/gamma/whatever to bring out a little more detail in these sorts of shots, because the range of tones is rather narrow. Some also have fun boosting one of the colour components - “Mineral moon processing”.

If you get addicted to trying for the best possible moon shot, you may find https://clearoutside.com/forecast/ Useful for knowing when the nights will be clear

Also, don’t discount early morning/evening moon photos - there can still be enough details to make the effort worthwhile even in daylight (if you play with the RAW).

OK, I’ll bite, why “MilkTea” as a title?

Interesting article and photos within it, but what made you want to post this one here out of all possible interesting articles on photography? Can we look forward to your own work with stairs?

A fun experiment.

It always amuses me to think how common blue moons actually are: “A blue moon refers either to the presence of a second full moon in a calendar month, to the third full moon in a season containing four, or to a moon that appears blue due to atmospheric effects.” - from Wikipedia, so maybe once or twice a year even just from the “twice in a month” form.

Nice views and framing!

Two of them are seeing the trees on the left looking a bit over-exposed/washed out - have you tried any post-processing (especially of RAW Format versions) to try and get the dynamic range under control?

Have you tried taking RAW format photos and doing a little post-processing (in particular whatever more detailed Histogram or Luminance tools you have)? This sidesteps a lot of functionality that usually guesses right, but can go horribly wrong.

Are you manually setting all three of aperture, ISO and speed? If not, double check what the auto settings of the others are (you should be getting those details in the photo meta data - visible under Properties|Details in Windows, as well as “Live”).

The photo with the dead tree in the water is really satisfying - well done. A large print and put up on (a shaded) wall sort of thing.

The other photo, of the far side of a lake, doesn’t really work for me - there’s the tree lines and their reflections pointing to the centre, but there’s nothing there to look at. You needed someone waving, or a large treasure chest (X marks the spot) or something.

Mmm, yes, you’d rather expect a path for the eye to start at the edge and move to the focus.

Yes, that again works, but needed that log.

Out of interest, did you also take a shot while in front of that patch of herbs? It could be taken as obscuring things, rather than deliberately breaking up the man-made parts (which is what I guess you intended).

Mmm, lens hoods are vital lens protectors - I’m not sure mine have ever usefully stopped glare, but protecting from knocks - invaluable!

For all depth of focus is more with a telephoto lens, I’d guess that’s still the cause of the issue. I’m just delighted the bulk worked so crisply, I’ll forgive the camera/physics a few hairs :)

Yes, depth of focus is greater, removing one issue of macro photography (at least, unless you’ve the hang of focus stacking and the post-processing required).

Well, yes, I suppose there’s that…

Cat making itself comfortable in an entirely inappropriate place (loft?) checks out.

As far as I’m concerned, post away, daily, or even (a little!) more frequently.

As to the photo - it obviously meets your stated goal, but the sun coming through the trees and providing some shadow boundaries, to me, is an important lift to the picture. It suggests to me that, while sticking to your goal, always look for an additional lift, without it needing to be consistent across the set.

Sun, sea and sand … and cloud !?!

A potent combination - I’ve had unexpectedly pleasing photos along the same lines

Canon’s DPP4 starts displaying RAW files from Canon Camera’s processed as if by the Canon camera, as a feature, for precisely that reason: a good starting point.

Even if it didn’t, the “ideal” recipe for displaying a RAW file as a JPG is probably relatively straightforward (how to form the luminance histograms, level of noise reduction & sharpening, etc.) and likely to give what appears to be the same results. I’d expect you’d only usually spot this with extreme pixel peeping. If the process was not straightforward, it would slow displaying the JPG in camera, and thus slow down the whole photography experience, so that’s not going to happen!

As an alternative to buying your own printer, if you can cope with the delay, there’s many firms out there that will do really nice prints from digital photos at surprisingly low costs, delivered pretty fast.

Give how much I’ve wasted on unused colours of ink and printers just breaking entirely, that is how I now do the few photos I want hard copies of.

In passing, if taking shots to record precise colours (you mention glazes), I hope you’ve worked out you want some known colour reference cards or the like in every shot - nothing, whether digital or film, is going to give you accurate colours or luminance without post-processing.