Creating this image of Passo Giau in northern Italy was a story of successes and failures. I drove up to this mountain pass to capture the sunset and the rising full moon. I hiked up a small ridge on the south side of the pass to photograph the north side and the setting sun. I moved from spot to spot along the ridge, taking multiple images in pans that I could stitch together during processing. I tried various compositions with different foreground elements at each location as the sun set. However, none of the compositions I captured looked promising. By then, the colors in the sky were starting to fade, and I was getting a little desperate.
I found this last spot and quickly set up my camera, snapping a pan of images. I moved so quickly that I blurred the far-left image in this pan and couldn’t use it to create this photo. However, this pan was the best in terms of composition, colors, and lighting.
After capturing this panorama, I waited until it became darker and then tried to capture long-exposure images of light trails as cars moved along the road over the pass. Unfortunately, I completely failed to get any usable images. Next, I moved along the ridge to photograph the rising moon, but clouds obscured it. By then, it was getting quite dark. I had to call it a day and carefully found my way back down the ridge to my car.
