Professional landscape and travel photographer Dan Zafra, known for his website Capture atlasTraveled to Wildes in Alaska last week from his home in Nevada. Total lunar eclipse Against a beautiful background of northern lights.
When he realized that there was a chance to see Arora the same night as a total lunar eclipse, also known as blood moon, Zafara went for it. His boldness paid him as he was treated to clean the sky and beautiful, vibrant green northern lights.
“I originally planned this journey for Alaska around the spring equinox, a period that is often associated with increased solar activity,” says Zafra Petpixel“Usually, I travel my journeys during a new moon for the optimal dark sky, but I made an exception this time.
To capture the incredible phenomenon, the Zafra went to Alaska equipped with three cameras: A star tracker with a 400 mm lens to catch the close-up shots of the moon during the eclipse on a star tracker, to capture another wide-angle shots (20 mm), and a third dedicated timeplay. Zafra says that her Arora Exposure F/5.6 and ISO 10,000 were 20 seconds, while her star shots were four seconds (F/5.6, ISO 6,400). Finally, the moon was shot at one-fifth place of one second at f/5.6 and ISO 6,400.
“My workflow established timeliness to run from time to time to run from time to time to run continuously throughout the program. The event,” photographer describes.
“It was a little stressful managing several setups,” consider Zafara. “But with the totality running up to an hour, I had enough time to capture everything and still have a full -fledged experience.”
Zafra is not a stranger for incredible events – he has seen Many amazing and And first a couple of lunar eclipse – but they were still thrilled to see both at once.
Zafra says, “I never expected a conversation between (Arora and Eclipse).” “Standing on a frozen lake, I slowly slowed down as a landscape, while the moon slipped into the shadow of the Earth.
“After the totality ended, it felt as if someone had returned the light – the landscape again became bright, and the moon’s glow returned.
Once Zafra returned home, he started processing all his images. For close-up shots, he used the picsite to remove stars from the backdrop of the Arora image, mixed them back from a separate shot, and then merged the moonly exposed the moon into the final frame.
“Seeing the extreme difference in brightness between the moon and the Arora, bracketing was necessary,” they say. “It was impossible to capture everything in a single shot.”
For their wide-angle images, the processing workflow was very straightforward. He combined a single exposure to the landscape and Arora with a small risk to jointly highlight the scene.
For the timelaps seen above, he edited images as usual and then compiled sequence with Lrtimalapse.
“Although I usually shoot wide-angle landscape astrophotography, my favorite shot from this incident is the close-up of the moon received with Arora,” says Zafra, she believes that it is a unique and original perspective.
“I have seen some other images of this incident from Northern Canada and Alaska, I have not come in any wide close-up that holds both the eclipse and Arora together.
Dan Zafra is more available on photography Capture atlasWebsite, FacebookAnd Instagram,
Image Credit: All photos by Dan Zafra
