This somewhat imaginative etching of Captain Moonlite is quite detailed for the time. As technology did not exist to replicate photographs in print at the time,  artists employed by publications were given the task of dramatising events in illustrations or producing portraits of the key players based on descriptions or existing photographs. This is clearly based on a carte de visite of Andrew George Scott, but altered to make him look older and give him a more typically bushrangery beard to accompany an article about his capture.

Similar procedures were done at the time to create images of the Kelly Gang that were more in keeping with their bushranger status by giving the boys beards and moustaches. This practice both produced likenesses that would make it easier to identify the offenders and cemented the stereotypes of how bushrangers should look.

Earlier etchings of bushrangers relied almost exclusively on descriptions as obtaining photographs was nigh on impossible for the vast majority of bushrangers.