Although writing your name on the moon is a timeless super-villain plot, writing your name with the moon seems like sheer insanity. But that's just what photographer John Kraus did, using a very unorthodox method: he created a lunar signature just by waving his camera at the sky.
Kraus is young, and experimental. A 15-year-old high school freshman from Satellite Beach, Florida, Kraus started studying photography within the last year. But even though he's inexperienced, Kraus managed to do something pretty cool with his Nikon D3300 SLR.
"The idea came by accident," Kraus tells me by email. "I don't own a tripod, so I tried to use a music stand to do a long exposure of the moon. When I pressed the shutter button, though, the stand moved, which blurred the image and made a line with the moon. That was when I realized I could do light painting with the moon."
The technique Kraus used wasn't particularly advanced. Setting his camera to a five second exposure, Kraus held down the shutter and signed his name with the lens pointed at the moon. It wasn't easy to do—Kraus said it took him over 100 tries to get right—but after about a half an hour of effort, he ended up with a lunar signature of his very own. If only all our John Hancocks could be so unique.
[via Petapixel]