moonlight 2

02:48 EST

what the world needs now

Is more cat imagery for the internet. Glad I can oblige, here at the end of our winter season. Much precipitation during the last 24 hours, fortunately none of it frozen.

time to move on?

click 'er for bigger

After five attempts to compose something from this landscape during the full moon rise (minus one night for this particular exposure), it's getting to be similar enough that I need to search for something different. On the other hand, now that the weather has turned warm again, it's incredibly pleasant being out in a nearby location at the intersection of moonrise and sunset, whether one or the other is obscured by clouds or not.

The bugs make their presence well known at that time of day, particularly in tall grass. But it's nothing to compare with the midges of Scotland that we encountered almost exactly four years ago, or the black flies last summer when we were in Grand Isle, MI. Photographers' preferred times of dawn and dusk also happen to be when midges and black flies swarm the most. Travelers to the beauties of the Highlands need to know about this nasty fact of Scottish life. In Michigan's Upper Peninsula the black flies swarmed badly enough to make large format photography (aka slow photography) exceedingly unpleasant along the shore of Lake Superior. In both locations, keep moving and the swarms are not usually unbearable. Set up a camera on a tripod for several minutes, and the hoards descend, bringing temporary insanity. Fortunately here in Central Virginia, the instances are far smaller, hardly approaching swarm status. But without some protection one is bound to return with mosquito bites.

Despite the blood sucking element to the environment, I'm likely to return repeatedly to this location.

a measure of success

last month's attempt - click 'er for bigger

After only three monthly attempts to catch a particular planetary occurance, it appears as if last night's foray into the clouds and rain was successful. This was a good example of being doubtful about what the weather is going to do half an hour before the time you want to take a photograph, but going out anyway. It was starting to rain when I left the house, although the sun was shining over the mountains to the west. It rained a bit more aggressively as I set up a new composition pointed in the general direction of where I thought the moon would rise, and the rain continued hard enough that I needed to break out the umbrella, for which I dearly needed a third hand, while also trying to change lenses and take a light reading.

Ah yes, the digital device would have been soooo much simpler. But who said easy was better? In most other forms of work that I've performed, rarely has the easy solution to a problem been the best one. Why should photography be any different?

The first exposure was captured, in the rain, with the landing lights flashing.

The horizon to the west clouded over as the sun went down, but to the east it seemed to clear somewhat. The rained ceased and I waited. After half an hour or so, sure enough the moon rose more or less in the location I had expected. I gave it another fifteen minutes and decided to move the camera across the field for a different composition.

Indeed, the lesson reinforced last night was not to let the weather discourage you from heading out for photographic purposes. Sometimes at the last minute things change for the "better," whatever the desired conditions might be.

The photo is coming...soon.

Update on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 03:31PM by KMW

Yes, the photo was posted last week, and trashed a few days later. Not a very good image, with a vast discrepancy between how it looks on different screens. The desktop PC where most photo work is performed is fairly "accurate" for gamma and output. (Although I notice that several recent images seem awfully dark.) When viewed on the MacBook Pro, with it's adjustable screen brightness, the moon was barely visible against a rather bright sky. Oh well, perhaps I'll keep trying, but I guess you really need a telescope to get a good image of the moon.