Mysterical Project

Background picture of hot springs:

2018-10-27
Canon Rebel EOS T3
EF-S18-55mm
20 seconds
f/8.0
ISO 800
18.0 mm focal length




Moon picture: 

2018-10-26
Canon Rebel EOS T3
EF75-300mm
1/200
f/5.6
ISO 3200
300.0 mm focal length

When approaching the mysterical project, I wanted to start with a photo of mine that was already otherworldly-looking. I found several good contenders among my Yellowstone pictures but the one that jumped out the most at me was a landscape I took of the moonrise overlooking the Mammoth Hot Springs upper terraces. I had set up the camera on a tripod for a 20-second exposure, but not stabilized the legs properly. Mark walked by during my exposure, accidentally bumped one of the legs, and the tripod started to tip over, and I had to quickly grab it before the camera fell all the way to the ground. I tried to right the tripod and get things re-stabilized, but couldn’t aim it in the exact same spot. Shortly thereafter, the exposure ended, and I was left with a supernatural, lightning-like streak of light that the moon had drawn as a result of the falling camera/tripod’s motion. When I opened the picture in Camera Raw, I started experimenting with various settings, and loved the effect achieved by increasing the color temperature, giving the picture a orange-yellowish glow. It reminded me of the color temperature I had seen when I photographed the rising moon a few nights before during my evening work study shift at the airport. I copied and pasted the moon from my other picture into the Mammoth picture, reduced the opacity so it didn’t stand out as much, and adjusted the color temperature and tint of the background picture to match the moon more. I like that there’s a common theme of moonrise between both pictures, with the obvious supernatural element of having two moons in the same sky.