photography - night sky- moon over hot springs, south dakota

the moon over hot springs, south dakota

lately i have been discovering the power of taking pictures in raw, particularly ones that you need to digitally brightened.              in this picture i only brightened the edges. 

in the original you could't see any of the clouds outside of the orange ring. 

when shooting in raw, your pictures are twice the size of a jpg and that means twice the amount of  data to work with! 

if a had not taken this picture in raw there is no way I could have brightened it up, without a terrible amount of grain and discoloration.
Details - f/4 - exposure 1/2 sec. - ISO 800 - lens 18-55