A composite image of the rising of the December 29, 2020 "Cold" Full Moon into a very clear evening twilight sky, here over the Badlands of Dinosaur P


A composite image of the rising of the December 29, 2020 "Cold" Full Moon into a very clear evening twilight sky, here over the Badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. The Moon rose with the Sun still up and lighting the landscape in warm tones, contrasting with the cool blues of the snowy landscape and sky. The pink Belt of Venus glow lights the lower sky near the horizon. It is not often we get a Full Moon (it was only 4 hours before being officially Full this night) rising with the Sun still up and illuminating the landscape. This is a layered blend of 13 exposures taken at 5-minute intervals, from moonrise just before sunset, to the Moon high in a dark sky more than an hour later. The ground and sky near the horizon is a blend of the first four exposures while the upper sky is from the last two exposures to place the now bright Moon into a darker sky as it actually appeared. The Moon moves its own diameter in about 2 minutes, so picking shots taken 5 minutes apart provides a good spacing for a shot with this field of view. Shots with longer telephoto lenses would be better with Moons taken every 3 to 4 minutes. These frames were taken as past of an 800-frame time lapse with the camera on auto exposure to ensure each frame was well exposed for the ground and sky. But as the Moon brightens as it rises that inevitably overexposes the Moon's disk — the exposure sequence I used here works for the time-lapse but is not so ideal for a composite still image like this. Had I wanted this to be shot taken just for a still image composite I would have had to fix the exposure at more or less what it was at mid-sequence here, to keep the lunar disk at that brightness and detail. So be it! All were with the Rokinon 85mm lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 100. It was about -10° C this evening.


Size: 5400px × 3600px
Photo credit: © Alan Dyer / VWPics / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: 85mm, alberta, alpenglow, astrograph, atmospheric, badlands, belt, cold, composite, december, deer, dinosaur, earths, exposures, full, galaxy, intervals, lumenzia, moon, moonrise, multiple, nightscape, park, provincial, red, rising, river, rokinon, scenic, sequence, shadow, snow, sunset, twilight, venus, winter, wolf