Mt. Rainier by Moonlight

A moon and a mountain on a muggy night...

I had the idea to capture both Mt. Rainier and the moon in the same exposure, but that did not work out because the moon didn’t rise until it was already very dark. As a result, the moon is over-exposed and the mountain is under-exposed. Even so, I’m happy with the way the photo turned out.

I did take a shot of Rainier as the moon was just rising; it was dimmer at that point (quite red from atmospheric extinction) but the details on the mountain were not overwhelmed by the moon. You can see the patches of snow and rock on the mountain:

I did take some exposures that show detail on the moon, but the rest of scene shows up as pitch black.

And this last photo gives you some idea of how the view looked to the naked eye:

Photos were taken with Sony α1 camera and 70-200mm lens. The lens was mostly set in the range of 70-90mm focal length, except for the close shot of the mountain which was made at 200mm. All exposures were time exposures, ranging from 1/1000th of a second for the moon alone, to 10 seconds for some of the longest exposures.