What, no lightning?
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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There a source for this? Beautiful work if it's not a composite image
Found the source: https://www.mikemezphotography.com/blog/2018/6/13/lava-the-milky-way-the-moon-mars-saturn-and-an-iridium-flare-in-one-image
From their post:
Yes, it’s possible. I did indeed capture what you see above in one shot. Although some of the Internet seems to disagree, it’s true. What you see above is the Milky Way, the moon, Mars, Saturn, an iridium flare, and lava from the Kilauea Volcano of Hawaii. I took this image during my visit to the Big Island of Hawaii in September of 2016 to document the 61G lava flow. I never imagined I’d walk away with such a scene, but the camera gods were watching over me that day. So, before this image gets torn apart by those who think it’s not real, I’d like to present the RAW image to you below. This image was shot on a Nikon D810 with a Nikon 14-24mm lens. Settings were F2.8, 25” at ISO 2500.
Do exposure/focus stacked images count as composite? Because that definitely is stacked, if it’s real.
100% a composite, there's no way to get the exposure right for all these things.
Whether each thing got it's own unique exposure or they did sky/land separate, it's definitely multiple images and exposures overlaid.
I use “composite” to mean that not all of those elements were physically in the same place and different photos have been brought together for a fictional scene, while “stacked” means the focus and/or exposure is adjusted through multiple pictures of one scene from a fixed position.
Composite feels more like lying when it isn’t labeled as such, stacking is just a technical skill that makes a real but otherwise unphotographable scene possible.
Fast HDR (not just regular high dynamic range capture) is also technically composite but does capture things that were simultaneously in the scene