This is a composite view of the Kargiak Chu valley on the night of August 30, 2014. The image was taken from the Kamzang campsite in the small village of Tangze at an elevation of 3990 m. The two Buddhist chortens are 200 m away. To the right of the chortens are snow-capped mountains along the northeastern edge of the Great Himalaya Range which are 5780 m high and 14 km distant. This image was captured towards the end of a 23 day trek with Kamzang Journeys (kamzang.com) across the ancient kingdom of Zanskar.
When the land images were taken there was a waxing crescent moon about 5 degrees above the western horizon. The moon illuminated snow on the Himalaya and the rocky slopes of the Zanskar Range on the left of the frame. The air glow close to the horizon was an intense pink/red and visible to the naked eye.
The full image is a composite of 19 photographs: 3 of the chorteens and mountains and 16 of the sky. All were captured with a Canon 6D and Sigma 35mm f/1.4. I used an AstroTrac for the sky photographs. Exposures for the sky were 30s, f/1.4 at ISO 1600; for the village and mountains 120s, f/1.4 at ISO 6400.
RAW files of the sky were processed using Adobe Bridge and Photoshop CS6 using settings recommended by Roger N. Clark (
www.clarkvision.com) who also gave me great advice on gear. Land and sky panoramas were assembled with PTGui Pro then combined using Photoshop.
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