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Moon in Motion

I returned from my trip to Big Bend National Park last Friday afternoon. I had a great time again. I did a lot more hiking than photographing but I did manage to capture some decent photographs. I am still working on processing some of the photos.

I captured this moonrise series on November 13th, the evening before the official full moon. We decided to go to Cerro Castellan (Castellan Mountain) to photograph the super moon with the mountain in the foreground. As expected, the moon came out very small so I put on my long lens and setup the intervalometer on my camera and captured 30 shots in 30-second intervals. I discarded 22 of them to create more separation between the moons. You can see how the lower moons are darker than the ones in the upper section. This is due to the haze, atmosphere on the horizon and the earth’s shadow. Had I started them earlier you would have seen the moon go from orange to bright white. But, I had to wait for the moon to clear the mountain before I could start the process.

Moon in Motion
Moon in Motion

TIP: Photographing the moon can be hard. The rule is to set your camera’s aperture to f/8, shutter speed to 1/60th of a second and your ISO to 100. Use a long lens and a tripod and you will get good results. The downside is that the surrounding scenery might turn out dark. But, the moon should be sharp!

This image was taken with my Canon EOS 5DS using my Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 II Lens set on 400mm. The camera was set on Manual mode with the aperture set at f/8, shutter speed at 1/60th of a second and the ISO set at 100. I used a tripod for stability. I captured a total of eight images which I stitched together into one image using Photoshop. Final processing was done in Photoshop using Nik Color Efex Pro.

You can access my Big Bend collection by clicking here. Please use the section below to post your comments, questions or suggestions.

T. Kahler Photography
T. Kahler Photography
© 2016 T. Kahler Photography

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