Moonset, Hallett Peak

I grew up in Colorado and never get tired of seeing images from there. This is quite a unique image, with the moon over the mountain. Thanks for sharing.

Hi Robert,

This image was taken a morning that had not worked for a sunrise an Nymph Lake (which will be uploaded later). I had gotten up to walk down and shoot at Nymph Lake at about 5:00 AM. Unfortunately it was too windy and the Linhof Technikardan 45S was going to act like a box kite. I went back to sleep and awoke about 9:00 and walked down to Bear Lake and saw that the moon was setting behind Hallett Peak. I walked back to the Jeep and got the camera, tripod, 150mm and 500mm lenses, Polaroid back, Kodak readyload holder, Polaroid Film, and Fuji transparency film. I set up putting the camera on the Gitzo 1228 Mountaineer (3 1/2 lb tripod with the Arca B1 Ball). I took a series of Polaroid test shots with the 150mm lens and took 3 shots. It was windy. I took the shots between gusts of wind. I new the exposure according to Polaroid tests. I switched lenses to the Nikon ED T500mm lens. There was not enough time to take a Polaroid test as the moon was now setting rapidly behind Hallett Peak. I checked the focus and adjusted the rear tilt. I knew that I had to use a shutter speed of no longer than 1/8 sec or the moon would blur in the image. I hoped that the shutters were consistant enough between the lenses and had determined that to maintain the focus from the trees to the moon I needed f32. I took 3 shots at this exposure between gusts of wind. The second shot I saw that the camera had been hit by the wind. This was confirmed when checking the transparencies under the loop. The first (this one) and the third shots were razor sharp.

When I showed the Print and transparencies to my friends at Bogen they decided that they definitely wanted to use it. No one had ever conceived of using this tripod to support a 7 1/2 pound 4" x 5" camera with a 500mm telephoto. They were amazed with the sharpness. We had to wait several years before Bogen/Gitzo finally used this image. This and 4 other images now sit in the corporate headquarters in Ramsey, NJ.

The image is quite impressive and sharp at 24" x 30". The 40" x 50" photo is almost as sharp, but you have to stand back about 3 feet from the image to see this size.