Approaching Lunar Eclipse

Another great composition. Congrats.7

Hi Rick. This is probably one of the most beautiful Lunar picture I have ever seen.

So what could I say about it ? This "Outstanding". Very well done, and merry merry christmas.

Regards, Rolph ;)

Astonishing sequence, great original shot.

What a stunning piece of work. How did you make this sequence? The colors and the background are magnificent.

best regards Per

Hi Per, To answer your question, I made this as follows - it only took 26 exposures! The star field was shot in the darkness of the Namib desert - 15 exposures of 30s were combined using the "mean stack mode" (Photoshop extended only) and this essentially removes the random noise giving a nice clear star field. Next I took a set of shots of the eclipsing moon (my third attempt to get this sequence as clouds rolled in for the first two). Then I loaded the finished star field into the background layer and loaded all the moons into layers above the stars. One by one I selected the moons in their different stages and left each cut out moon in their separate layers, adjusted their sizes, adjusted their position and overlap and eventually came up with this sequence. It takes some effort to get it just right, but the result was worth the time spent. Cheers, RickDB