Behind the Shots: Moon Eye
It’s been nearly two years since I captured the “Moon Eye”, and I figured it was finally time to tell the full story behind the shots! Since there are two versions of the moon eye that went viral, let’s start with a concise summary of them, the long story short, if you will:
Planning the Shot
In 2020, I had big plans for a trip to finally summit some Colorado mountains that I’d been wanting to hike for what seemed like ages. Like many people experienced that year though, my plans were upended due to covid. The hike I was going to do required a train ride to the trailhead, and that train shut down in response to the pandemic. I had to cancel my flight and lodging and wait for at least another year. Of course I still wanted to do a trip in 2020, so I started looking at alternatives. The Moab area in Utah had long been on my bucket list, and I knew Arches National Park was one of the main attractions there. Since I’m always on the lookout for interesting moon alignments for photos, I figured I might as well see if there were any arches I might be able to capture the moon in. To start, I opened up Google Earth, which shows a virtual 3D map and works well for scouting for landscape and moon photography. I started “flying” around to the different arches in the park, searching for one with an East-West alignment looking through the arch, meaning it would potentially work for a photo of the moon rising or setting through it. One of the most popular arches in the park is called “North Window”, and it did indeed have the proper orientation. Even better, I could see that given the shape of the arch, getting a photo of the moon in the center would look just like an eye! I excitedly checked to see if and when the moon might pass behind it and sure enough, it seemed there was an alignment that should work out! I immediately decided Moab would be where my replacement vacation would be, and started making the travel arrangements.
Google Earth is a great program for landscape photography scouting, and very helpful in preliminary moon shot planning. What you see here is not a photo, but a computer rendered 3D map that you can virtually fly through. If you notice the compass in the upper right, you’ll see that we’re essentially facing East here, which means we should likely be able to find a time when the moon rises behind the arch!
For the photo to look like an eye, it would definitely have to be what I call a precision shot, meaning it’s not just a matter of the moon rising over a general area or mountain, but standing at exactly the right spot, at exactly the right time to get the desired outcome. It’s not an exaggeration to say that just a few steps left or right means a different alignment. These are my favorite kinds of moon photos, but certainly challenging to plan and execute. Complicating things further for this project was the terrain of Arches National Park. Planning apps are very helpful for plotting out photos like this, however the terrain data is often unreliable and often completely lacking for rugged areas and especially for rock formations, such as pillars and arches. I used all 3 of my photography planning apps to cross check everything: PlanIt!, TPE (The Photographer’s Ephemeris), and PhotoPills. In doing so I could see some discrepancies and from that had to make some assumptions and compensations on the terrain data.
An example of what I call a “Precision Shot”. Photos like these require you to stand at exactly the right spot on the ground, at exactly the right time. Just a few steps in any direction could mean you miss the desired alignment with the moon.
In the months leading up to my trip, I continued to evaluate and adjust my plans - this was something I’d only have one chance to get right! Finally, the time came, and I drove the 8.5 hours from my home in Phoenix to my first destination in the Moab area, Canyonlands National Park. After exploring there for a few days, I went to neighboring Arches National Park and was in awe just driving through the majestic scenery. As I made my way to the campground where I had a reservation, I stopped at several pullouts on the side of the road and snapped some photos of the beautiful landscape. A snow storm had covered not only the La Sal mountains in the distance, but some of the desert in the park as well, making for excellent views. Hours later, after setting up camp and going back out for more photos, I sadly realized that I had left my tripod at one of the pullouts earlier. I figured it had to be long gone, but it was expensive and essential to the moon photos. I made the drive back and as I had predicted, my tripod was nowhere to be found. After sulking for a bit, I realized that if I still wanted to capture the moon eye, which would be happening in two days, I had no other option than to go into town and purchase a new tripod. There was only one electronics shop that appeared to have camera equipment, so I headed there the next day and found one that was rather expensive and less than ideal, but really the only thing that would work with my camera and lens setup. Now, I just had to cross my fingers that all of my planning would pay off.
As I drove through Arches National Park a couple days before the moon eye photo shoot, I pulled off to the side of the road and snapped some photos of the beautiful scenery. Unfortunately, I left my tripod at one of the spots, not realizing until hours later. When I returned it was nowhere to be found.
Getting The Shot
My main goal was to get a shot of the moon perfectly centered in the arch. If I was positioned correctly, it would first appear in the lower left of the arch as it rose, and make its way “through” it and to the upper right. Given that the moon moves its own diameter across the sky in about 2 minutes, the entire transit behind the opening would be about 5 minutes, but it would only be well-centered for a matter of seconds. I arrived at the location well in advance and set up my Canon EOS R camera with the Tamron 150-600 G2 lens, all on my shiny new tripod. As the time for the moon to appear approached, I was as nervous as I ever had been for a photo shoot, wondering if all of my planning put me in the right spot, or if I was off in my calculations and I’d be too far to the right or the left. If that happened, I wouldn’t even know which way I’d have to move to correct for it, and likely wouldn’t have enough time to figure it out and make the necessary adjustments. My anxiousness shot up even more when the moon didn’t appear when I thought it would. I checked my camera settings over and over again, all while constantly glancing at the arch. After a minute or so it started to peek into the arch. I shot nearly continuously using a remote shutter, which helps to avoid camera shake. I re-positioned myself slightly more than once in order to ensure the moon would be centered in the arch, and by the time the moon had passed all the way through I had taken nearly 400 shots. At that point, there was definitely some yelling and a little bit of dancing.
Single Exposure: 428mm 🔹 F/9 🔹 1/500 sec. 🔹 ISO 125
Original Instagram Post
The Double Exposure Image
But the night wasn’t over! Several minutes later, the moon emerged above the arch and into the open sky, and the lighting was such that I could do some in-camera double exposures. Double exposure effects are often achieved in Photoshop or a similar program by importing and manipulating two different photos. However, many digital cameras today allow you to merge multiple photos at the time you take them, but of course with none of the flexibility you get with editing software. So in this case, I zoomed in some and captured the moon centered alone in the frame in one shot, and then repositioned my camera to center on the arch, and when I snapped that photo, the camera merged it with the first one since it was in double exposure mode. Because I did the exposures at different focal lengths (zooms), the moon appears larger than it actually did from my position, as you can see comparing the double exposure to the single exposure as in the side-by-side above. You may also notice the moon is more in focus in the double exposure. This is partly due to being able to focus separately on it, but also because the moon was higher in the sky and clearer than when it’s nearer to the horizon. It should be noted though, that it’s quite possible for the moon to appear this size in the arch, and even larger. In fact, the next night I captured the moon rising behind the arch again, but this time, due to my position, the moon was larger than the entire arch. For more on moon size in photos feel free to see my post on The Secret to Big Moon Photos.
In-camera double exposure
Moon Exposure: 550mm🔹F/9🔹1/160sec.🔹ISO 160
Arch Exposure: 250mm🔹F/9🔹1/5 sec.🔹ISO 160
Original Instagram Post
Sharing the Images to the World
Two nights after capturing the “Moon Eye”, I was on my way home and in a hotel room going through the photos. It was time for an Instagram post! But which one should I share? I was happy with several of the images, but I decided upon the one that I thought looked most like an eye, which was one of the double exposures. A week later, it started to take off and went viral, by any definition of the word (excluding the biological ones). I was contacted by a few different publications, such as Petapixel, and NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, and so I let them know that the image that had gone viral was a double exposure, but while it was fairly true to scene, I’d much rather they use the single shot so I sent them that one.
Headline as seen on PetaPixel, one of the largest photography news sites.
About a month and a half after I had shared the double exposure image on Instagram, I shared the single shot, which also went viral. The two different versions were out in the wild and this led to a fair amount of confusion, understandably. When shared on social media, the specifications behind images are rarely included. Though my original captions included my camera settings, and the facts surrounding the single and double exposures, people made their own conclusions when that information wasn’t available with the shares. Also, it seemed that inevitably, internet sleuths would track down the wrong original post and think they had found the answer. Many times I saw comments on the single shot that said something like “I found the original post by the photographer, and he said himself that this is two photos merged into one!”. And then sometimes you’d get the opposite, and when the double exposure image was shared, someone would look it up, find the single exposure, and come back to defend it as a single shot. To be clear, I don’t blame anyone for mixing any of that up. To me, any confusion around the images is completely understandable given they are very similar, and often shared without context. While I imagine most people don’t care much about any of this, it’s important to me because I aim to be open and honest about all of my work. I never want viewers to have to wonder if an image of mine is a single photo or a composite, so each one includes that information in the caption. Since you’ve read this much, I hope you’ve enjoyed the story behind the moon eye! If you have any questions feel free to let me know in the comments.
Many people see the moon eye images and say “The moon is not that big”, yet here is a photo I took the next evening, with an even larger moon. While we can’t really change the size of the moon, we can change the apparent size of what’s on the ground, so the moon appears larger only by comparison. For an in-depth explanation on this check out my blog post on “The Secret to Big Moon Photos”.
Single Exposure: 600mm 🔹 F/9 🔹 1/160 sec. 🔹 ISO 160
