Another quick post as I have processing work for a client and that has a majority of my focus right now.
The moon!
A full (or full-ish) moon is a great way to practice learning the photography trinity – shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings on your camera as the moon is a great way to practice what you may know about them and see a clear effect as you adjust them. It is also a great opportunity to dip your feet in the manual mode settings on your camera. Do keep in mind that the moon and the night sky moves faster then you realize though and you will get motion blur if you set that shutter speed too low. But that’s all the more reason to practice with the moon – so you experience that too.
After that you can get into the finer details of getting trees or clouds in front of the moon. Clouds take patience though. And just building from there. The sky’s the limit so to speak.
Also photographing the moon introduces you to truly understanding your subject as much as possible. For example, the moon has phases, and getting the phase you want to photograph will require research. Furthermore, understanding how the light involved works can help you decide on better photography settings. Finally, the moon moves around in the sky, so you might need to know where the moon is and where it is heading or you might find it’s nowhere to be found in the sky when you go to photograph depending on the time of year.
I’d recommend starting with a tripod as well until you get a handle on them, though keep in mind I rather dislike using tripods and often get mine out only to have an argument with it. Not to imply tripods are bad – they are amazing tools, just not usually with my photography style at this point in time. They make great paper weights too.