A Wondrous Night Canvas Print

This image was taken after 2 AM in April within Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. It is a composite of two images merged together, but not in the traditional sense of merging images as with HDR, high dynamic range, or with focus stacking, what I refer to as HFR, or high focal range. Instead, the sky portion was taken as a 30 second exposure at ISO 8000 and merged with the land segment of the image's composition that was taken for 2 minutes at ISO 2000. Needless to say, it is virtually impossible to remove all the noise in such a composite when using such high ISO settings. However, for me, it provides another avenue for my art, as I love being in the great outdoors to shoot nightscapes.

Don Mercer is an author and freelance fine art photographer. Research for one book took him to the middle of Cambodia in 1999, as he was the first from among his wartime unit to return to that country. During the War in Southeast Asia - known to most as the Vietnam War, he flew over two hundred combat missions as an Air Force pilot in the Cessna O-2A. His combat assignment was as a Forward Air Controller, or FAC. The majority of his combat missions were flown in Cambodia at night. While in Southeast Asia in 1970-71, his interest in photography intensified with the purchase of his first two of numerous Nikon cameras. Black and white, as well as color, 35mm, and Super 8 movie films were used at the time. The transition to digital...