Red Rock Moon

Took an evening trip to Sedona to catch the moon rising above Cathedral Rock. The main goal was to capture the moon and the blue and pink of dusk. Still learning the when and where to time the angle of moonrise with the elevated horizon.
Nikon D90, 18-105@105mm, f/8, iso200.

Did a lot of dodging and cloning a dark area around the moon that appeared when I underexposed the single exposure to keep from blowing out the moon. This was taken with the 300mm f/4.

Any c&c welcome

Like the first one. Thanks for sharing.

Both are nice shots. The moon looks pretty yellow on my monitor.

Morris, the moon is yellow on all of the shots I took last night, (except all those I blew out) . Could be caused by light scattering from some light smoke particles from AZ fires.
I also noticed some red along the botom of the moon's edge and green along the top. Atmospheric diffraction of the different wavelengths?
Also, what would have caused the camera to record the darker sky surrounding the moon that I had the dodge and clone out? This darker area in the sky extended about a moon's radius away from the moon

Really like the first one.

That's very interesting about the different color fringing and darker area around the moon. I have no idea what might cause those. Maybe some of our scientists can chime in.

Really like the position of the moon in that second image. Very nice!

I like the first as it shows more of the beautiful environs.
You should desaturate that vivid yellow in the moon, though. That's from the camera I believe, and not the haze. Can't explain the odd 'ring around the moon' you describe, but you did a great job of eliminating it.
The edge artifacts you describe sounds like chromatic aberration from the lens.

Here is the original that shows the darkening of the sky around the moon, if anyone has a possible cause.

Here is the edited image with the moon dodged to eliminate some of the yellow.
The yellow reminds me of an old Don Williams' country tune "Yellow Moon"

hmm, I like the shot, it just seems unnatural without a grey moon though.