Interview With The Photographer Behind The Famous ‘Moon Games’ Series – Laurent Laveder

French photographer Laurent Laveder’s Moon Games photo series has been an internet sensation for several years now. Several years is a long time in the cyber world. To survive this long on the internet means you can almost be called timeless. The Moon Games series no doubt deserves this word. Featuring simple silhouettes of people interacting with the Moon, this witty, peaceful, fun-filled series proves that sometimes the simplest approach can achieve the greatest result. By using a few props and tweaking the camera angles, Laurent has made the Moon into many unexpected things in this magical series.

Having seen his photos being passed around on countless websites (sometimes without any credits to himself), I decided to track him down for the real story behind his amazing artworks. Here is our conversation (J – myself, L – Laurent):

J: Laurent, please tell us a little about yourself . What do you do and who are you?

L: I studied physics at University because of my passion for astronomy. I have been a professional photographer for four years now. Before that, I did many jobs: scientific journalist, computing course tutor, writer of user manuals (mainly of computer programmes), etc. Now I’m a full time photographer, but I also edit books, postcards, and sometime I give lectures about the sky.

As a specialist of landscape astrophotography (which means I capture both the astronomical phenomenon in the sky and the landscape), I’m a member of The World At Night (TWAN: http://www.twanight.org/), a program participated by about 30 landscape
astrophotographers from around the world. This group holds exhibitions, workshops and has also produced a book.

I left my birth place French Riviera when I was 25 year old, and ever since then I have lived in Brittany, a great place for people who love nature.

moon games

J: Your Moon play photos are very original and never-before-seen. Could you tell us what inspired you? Is it a book from your childhood? A dream or just pure imagination?

L: The Moon Games series came from a discussion I had with my girlfriend Sabine (Sabine is also a photographer: http://www.sabinesannier.com/) about 8 years ago. I told her I was doing original astrophotogaphy by capturing the landscape along with stars and the Moon, but I wanted to go further. After the discussion we decided to do some photos of someone interacting with the Moon. So this is OUR Moon Games.
Sabine is a graphic artist, so she has a lot of imagination. Most of the best ideas came from her mind. Sometime, I’m just the photographer.

J: Many things look simple but are in fact complicated. I am sure this applies to your photos. Tell us about the setup of your photo shoots. What equipments did you use? How long did each photo take in average?

L: The setup was easy: a DSLR camera with a telelens, usually between 200 and 300 mm. And a tripod of course (even for the gardening Moon series). The most important thing was where to take the picture. You have to be in a place where the model was right in front of the Moon when it was rising or setting. When Sabine was the model she had to be in a higher position than me. There’s a beach a few kilometres from our house and it was an ideal location. If Sabine was higher or lower than the Moon, I had to move down or up on the beach. I also had to shift to the left or right to place Sabine at the right spot in the photo.

One Moon Game session lasted about one hour, and we could usually get about 10 to15 good pictures. In those days, we only did 8 sessions after we started in Summer 2006.

J: Did you materialise your idea in sketches before taking a picture?

L: This is actually an important point. The Moon rises and sets quickly (slower in June), so if you didn’t know what to do but try to
improvise on the beach, you would lose a lot of time. We knew exactly what to do, and in what order. The sketches also allowed us to understand our ideas better, and to modify them for better results.

J: Was Photoshop involved in any photos?

L: The only time I used Photoshop was to increase the depth of field. Because at twilight, there is not enough light to stop down the lens’s diaphragm to focus on the model and the Moon (I used a long focal length, and with a full frame camera like Canon 5D Mark II, the depth of field is very shallow). In fact, even when stopped down to 22 or 32, it was still impossible to have the whole scene in focus.

So sometimes I took a first photo with the focus on the model, and a few seconds later, another one focused on the Moon. I then merge the two photos in Photoshop. But I only did it twice, for the framed Moon, and for some of the Gardening Moon series.
It would be easier to use Photoshop for having better results (good exposure and focus of the Moon AND the foreground), but it’s too
easy. And I think people really love these pictures because they look natural and real, not perfect but realistic.

J: You have published a book based on Moon Games. Could you tell us about it? There are poems (in French) accompanying each photo. Was each poem written specifically for the photo?

L: For this book, we asked 19 different writers to choose a photo as the inspiration for their writing. They had “Quartier libre” (in French, to have “qartier libre” means you can do whatever you want during a period of time, but a “quartier” is also a “Quarter Moon”). Then, Sabine got her inspiration from the photso and the texts to create the calligrams.

J: Finally, which photo is your favorite and why?

L: My favorite one is the Moon like a balloon because this view is really peaceful and well composed. There is no empty space and it looks very natural.
But Sabine prefers to the pictures with the Crescent Moon, because she likes the black silhouette on a blue sky.

Here is the link for our book: http://quartier.libre.pixheaven.net/
You can also buy our postcards: http://cartes.pixheaven.net/