Balanced Rock in Arches National Park is a little challenging to photograph when the moon is up. It makes it near impossible to get the rock illuminated, since the typical photo of the formation is looking south – which is precisely where the moon was when I was trying to take my photo. The trail taking visitors around the tower gets pretty close to the rock… too close to take a photo of the rock that actually looks like Balanced Rock. So I set up shot north of the rock just after the trail splits to circle the formation, positioning the moon just above the mammoth boulder.

Canon 60D | 17mm | f/8.0 | 28 seconds | ISO 400 | RAW

I played with the aperture a little to get different levels of moonbursts, but if the shot went too long, the lights in the sky moved too much, altering the desired results. I’m glad I was able to get some stars in the shot, considering that I was at ISO 400 and had a very large light in the sky. But I guess sometimes you get lucky when it comes to capturing a nice shot.

~signed, Carltonaut