Night hike in Rocky Mountain National Park

A couple friends and I went for a hike before the snowstorm late Saturday afternoon.  We reached the lake as the sun was setting but the sky was totally clear of clouds.  This made for blah photos of the sunset, but great shots of the stars once it got dark.  It's always a unique experience hiking for miles in the dark with your friends.  The moon was so bright that we almost didn't even need our headlamps.  I love the way the peaks look in the moonlight:

This nighttime image is taken at Two Rivers Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.  The lake is a bit off the beaten path making it a little less visited than other popular lakes in the Park.  The photograph was taken around 8:30 PM in early November.  The prominent peak in the center of the photograph is Notchtop Mountain, a 12,000 ft. peak that sits on the Continental Divide.  Photographs that look like this are composites of two images due to the extreme contrast of light between the sky and the ground.  One exposure is taken of the peak and foreground while the other is taken of the starry sky.  Then, the two are combined in post processing.


Technical info for the sky exposure:

f/2.8
11.00 mm
20 seconds
ISO: 2500

For the Ground:

f/8
11.00 mm
30 seconds
ISO 100