I’ve been thinking about the moon for many reasons. It’s been on the news recently both locally and globally. Locally, a new artwork of the whole moon has been installed in Greenwich near the Prime Meridian Line. It’s a large, reflective polished stainless steel globe with all the features of the moon created across its surface by artist Luke Jerram. I hope to go and see it soon. And globally, there was outrage recently and people were genuinely saddened, when a 4,000 kg part of one of Elon Musk’s Space X rockets hit the moon with the force of 3 tons of TNT.

For all of humanity, people have loved and been fascinated by the moon. There’s even a theory that it was the beauty of the moon and the night sky that sparked life and our brains into consciousness.

My musings triggered the memory of seeing a crescent moon in a twilit starry sky in Santorini almost 40 years ago. It was such a beautiful sight that I remember thinking that this eastern moon could have inspired the 1,001 stories of the Arabian Nights. I hadn’t consciously thought about it but that evening must have influenced my current goal, to create 1,001 visual stories.

Since my early days of photography I’ve loved taking photos of the full moon. These have been solitary ventures or with my husband as companion if it’s been dark and isolated. However, for the two months of June and July I was with a group and it’s been a very different experience. We were also lucky with the weather both times.

The most recently was on Primrose Hill. What astonished me when I got there was how many people were already sitting on the hill all facing towards the City. It was a warm and balmy night. Once my camera was set up on the tripod, other people strolling by were asking what we were all waiting for and I could tell them just to hang on for a few minutes and they’d see the full moon break over the horizon. So there was a lot of excitement when that did happen and a beautiful dark pink/red moon became slowly visible to the right of the dome of St Paul’s.

Below are some of my photos from that night, 29 July 2026. All the photos in this blog are mine and you can click on each one to see it in a lightbox.

These musings led me to a couple of questions. Why does the full moon looks bigger at the horizon? and Why does the moon look more deeply yellow/orange/red/pink near the horizon? I found an excellent short article published by NASA which answers both. Firstly, the moon isn’t actually bigger at the horizon, it’s an illusion, caused by the way we perceive it. And, secondly, the deeper colour is real, due to the Moon’s light travelling through more of the atmosphere. It’s a lovely little article, only around a 2 to 5 minute read so I’ve linked to it here and urge you to read it if you have the slightest interest. NASA article

Then I realised how much the moon features in my art so I’ve looked back and found a few of my favourites.

My all time favourite, just off the top of my head, is this one of the Shard with a digitally created moon, from June 2025. I went moon hunting that night and couldn’t capture the moon where I had hoped due to my bad planning and clouds. What I did capture was the Shard in a lovely evening light with a beautiful pink colour lighting up the Cannon Street Railway Bridge (part of the Illuminated River public arts project designed by artist Leo Villareal). So, over the next couple of days, I made a full moon from the glass shards on the top of the building. Then I manipulated parts of the photo to create a new composite. The result is entirely made from the one photograph.

The next one that comes to mind is Diamonds in the Sky from 2024 which is one of the artworks on my website. This one is made up of two of my photographs. I cut the buildings from the original sky and replaced the sky with a photo of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Room when it was on display at Tate Modern. I love that’s it’s made up of thousands of light points but also has the shady outlines of people in there. A microcosmic representation of life and the universe. Then I created the moon and stars from the windows of the building and placed the asterism the Diamond of Virgo in the bottom left corner. If you’d like to read more about this digital artwork, you can click through here.

My next one uses a real moon from a photograph taken in March 2020 when the full moon was setting over the City of London. The Walkie Talkie is the feature building.

I’ll just break off slightly here. As I was looking through my moon photos and art, I discovered that on the very 1st day I bought my first camera in September 2018, I took a moon photo. Then on the 6th day, I captured my first full moon. It surprised me and made me feel quite nostalgic!

Back to the more recent past and here is one from October 2025. This was taken at Trinity Buoy Wharf and in this one I enlarged the moon and added colour selections.

Next is one that went through a bit of a process. I can’t always follow back how I arrived at something but with this one I can see a rough outline of how it developed. Between August and October 2025, after I had taken up making physical art in July, I sketched a weird little building. On the 8th of September I went out to take photos of the moonset. During that session I took photos of the moonset and of the new building at Canada Water called The Founding. Somehow the sketch and that photo session blended in my mind to produce the digital art in the end photo.

That brings me on a winding route bang up to date and my latest painting which I finished in August 2026. This has been painted entirely in acrylic on board but still contains some photographic elements which are the speed trails in red and green. These symbolise the speed trails of the Thames clipper ferries which show up in long exposure photography. If you’d like to read more about this painting, click through here.

It’s going to be in an exhibition at Tower Gallery, Plaistow, London starting on the opening night on Thursday 10th September and running through to October 4th 2026.

If anyone would like to come along, the Opening Event will run from 6 - 9pm on Thursday 10th September 2026. Message me and I can give you all the location details.

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Yours

Loren

Moonlight and Magic