Delicate Eclipse

I thought that I'd try my hand at shooting the lunar eclipse the other week, and after reading that it would be close to the horizon (in Denver), I figured that I needed to either go to where it was flat or get on the other side of the Rockies. I opted for driving to at least the Western Slope, one thing led to another & I decided on Delicate Arch. The weather forecast looked good (clear) on Monday, so I made room reservations in the hope of getting some sleep both before & after. Still "clear" on Tuesday so I headed out after working in the morning. Somewhere after Grand Junction, I could see clouds blanketing the sky from AZ to north of I-70, with a few breaks in the north. Where else could I go? Cisco with those great, falling down buildings? Facing the wrong way. Checked the forecast after getting in to Moab: mostly cloudy all around Moab until I checked pretty far SW or Green River, where it was "partly cloudy". Alternates of the Bridger Jacks, Six Shooter Peaks for foreground? Or the Black Dragon Overlook off of I-70 with the Swell as foreground? I woke up at 1am & rechecked the weather: "mostly cloudy" extended to the SW. Not terribly excited about hanging around on an I-70 overlook, I went outside and...... the moon was shining strongly. I ignored the heavy clouds on the horizon & decided to go for Delicate Arch anyway. At least I'd get a walk in. About 3/4 of the way in, I realized that I was using my headlamp more than at the start. I looked up: moon obscured by clouds. Drat. But I was almost there, so I kept walking and, well, this is what I got. When I got there, the moon was shining through a moon-sized opening in the clouds, so I got my foreground shot, then messed around with settings to get the moon. I couldn't do nicely spaced shots & just shot when the moon peeked out through the clouds, so the spacing is erratic. Kind of noisy as I was just using ambient light, but otherworldly nonetheless.

VERY nice Monika, and nice job making the most of adverse conditions for your planned shoot.

Still a neat shot. Sounds like quite the adventure too.

" Just a little farther" lead to a nice scene. Is the halo around the arch evident in your full file?

Doug, yes it is, and more prominently on the right side of the arch. In other versions there was quite a bit of CA, but I found that if I processed the foreground before blending it with the moon series, I got less artifact.

kind of spacey--i like it!