Spectacular Moon Photos by Mill District Resident Ric Rosow

Thank you to Mill District resident, Ric Rosow, for sharing these photos and his facinating process for creating the images.

The above photograph is a composite of eight photographic images taken during the early morning of September 4th. There are seven separate images of the moon moving across the sky. The images were taken between 5:40 and 5:57 a.m. I zoomed in on the moon to the full extent my 70-300 lens allowed. The eighth image is the stadium taken at 6:03 a.m. I changed the camera's setting to reveal the stadium and zoomed out to taken in the full width of the building and part of downtown. I then combined the seven moon images into one image. It was not a process of copying and pasting the moon seven times into the image. Rather, the process involved combining seven independent images of the moon into one, which I call the "7-moons" image. After completing that I then blended the "7-moons" image with the image of the stadium. At the time these photographs were taken the moon was not as close to the stadium as it is in this composite photograph. The moon was higher in the sky approaching the stadium. I transformed the 7-moon image to make the moon smaller and then blended that into the sky directly above the stadium.

Above is a second composite of the moon setting over the US Bank Stadium on September 4th. The images that comprise this composite were taken after the 7-moons composite photo when the sky was becoming brighter and the moon lighter. In this photograph I chose images that overlapped each other to create the composite. In addition I applied a special effect to the stadium roof which made the letters on the roof glow as if it was a neon light.