P#36: Moon Over the Titan in the Fisher Towers near Moab

The Making of a Legendary Image

Ed Cooper: This photograph of the moon over the Titan in the Fisher Towers is one of my classic desert images. It was taken with a 5x7 view camera. That's a real moon there. That's not a fake moon. In so many pictures, especially in postcards, you see these fake moons, but this moon was really there. (click the image for a larger version)

I used my 1000mm lens and a 5x7 format view camera to get this picture. I used the special film to contrast process pan film to increase the contrast because the basic contrast of the scene was very, very low. It was maybe a little bit hazy and the lighting was fairly flat because the sun was almost straight on in this scene, maybe just slightly behind to the right to cast a few shadows.

Anyway, that's what I feel is my classic desert image. It appears in The Soul of the Rockies book.

In Summary

The desert can be beautiful, especially at night. The problem is, it's not always easy to capture the majesty of the terrain in the evening. Ed Cooper, however, managed to do just that in his legendary Fisher Towers photograph.