“Nightly Ritual”

„Who takes care of the night sky? Who drags the moon into the sky every single night?
It will remain a well-kept secret, this nightly ritual.” 

―  LMH

The original sketch

I didn't edit this picture according to a clear line, but kept adding other things and flexibly changing what I didn't like. I was inspired by images from the Internet. The idea was to put a folding ladder under a night sky. Above it should be the empty shell of the crescent moon and at the bottom of the ladder the moon. At first, the plan was to create only one image. I got the idea of a second picture later. Important to me in this work was especially the light and the shadows, as well as muted colors. Then I started to look for suitable pictures.

Matching pictures

The ladder I found the fastest after a little search. I cut it out and prepared it for the scene, with a cut mask of course, so I could make changes later. I also looked for images of a crescent moon, but it came down to using a moon I had used before that I found in my download folder. The picture with a field, a house and mountains in the background fortunately also caught my eye. I removed the house because it disturbed me and the attention should be fully on the moon and the ladder. After everything was put together it was about the atmospheres and color adjustments.

Colors and atmosphere

Later I added a star because I thought the space to the left of the ladder was too big and needed to be filled. The black moon in the sky is a shape I created myself and used a filter to create a 3D effect with shadows. Then I added a texture above the ladder because it looked too unrealistic to me and the composition was ready. Then it was still a matter of brightness and color. I put several brightness gradients on the moon and the star to make the scene look more realistic. Finally, I raised the shadow tones a bit and tweaked the color values, using HSL settings and white balance.