Instead of waiting around for another sunset with the rest of the world…I prefer to capture events during “low traffic” hours and often by myself. This Moonset under the Milky Way was another one of those awesome moments of loneliness.

During May I wound up taking my first batch of “double exposures”(yes on a DSLR, so it’s in camera and less tricky) and had a blast. I love how unique every photo tends to be and have shot about 5 sessions worth of them now. Here are some of my favorites from the first couple times I tried them in Mexico.

The moon is tucked behind the clouds in the left of the frame while some lightning is between the palm fronds.

The moons light spraying cloud bottoms and illuminating the sky

The very last rays of moonlight create the same red hue as a sunset. It is due to the angle of incoming light traveling through a longer portion of our atmosphere

Nothing makes me smile like a person who constantly creates amazing images on equipment that is anything but top of the line. Most likely because I’m not rich and I’m always seeking max value tools to work with haha. Anyways…recently I shot the same lightning bolt on my GoPro4 silver and Canon 7Dii with tokina 11-20mm 1.8 lens to compare and contrast each setup for anyone interested like myself. I left each camera with the same ISO, F-stop and focal lengths, however I left the shutter on the GoPro4 open twice as long(5 seconds), to compensate for its smaller light collecting sensor. Both shots came out nice and I was shocked at how good the GoPro looked full screen on an HD laptop. Obviously, since the GoPro consists of less pixels(4000×3000 instead of 5400×3600) than the canon image, it degrades quicker upon zooming/cropping. However, at just 25% of the price cost of my canon set up…I think you get about 75-85% of the image quality that I get with my canon at full resolution and almost a negligible difference if your only intent is to use it on a low resolution platform like Instagram etc. So as always, know what you are shooting and why, because maybe you can save some money while you’re skinning the same chicken😜🍻

Canon 7Dii w Tokina 11-20

GoPro4 Silver