Pascal Fouquet captured Falcon Heavy photobombing the moon, when SpaceX launched the United States Space Force X-37B spaceplane on the USSF-52 mission.
Shooting with a Nikon D850, Fouquet said the trick was to expose the camera to capture the details of the moon, not the rocket. He set his shutter speed to just 1/1600 of a second, capturing the split second moment Falcon Heavy passed in front of the moon.
"Scouting for an ideal location proved challenging, given the limited spots available for capturing the shot," Fouquet reportedly said. "Ultimately, I settled on a somewhat unconventional choice—an open field behind a hospice center 13.8 miles away from the launch pad."
Fouquet, a photographer from Orlando, Florida, was chosen as the United States' National Award first place winner for the Sony World Photography Awards 2024. The awards program comes out of a partnership between Sony and the World Photography Organization, and receives hundreds of thousands of photo submissions from across the world.