Scattered Thoughts . . .

It required approximately eight hours of work today (not including all the time spent preparing my gear and shooting), but I managed to put together a full composition of last night's supermoon lunar eclipse (photo below). This composition is comprised of twelve images... eleven shots of the moon as it rose into the starry sky (chosen out of approximately 300 images I shot)... and one shot of the starfield which was in the background of this rare show. The final composition is 6000 x 4800 pixels which would make a beautiful high resolution 8"x10" print. If necessary and if I desired, I suppose I could even produce a high resolution 16"x20" print of this composition.  My original plan was to try to capture a few good images of the eclipse. I had never shot an eclipse before so I was prepared for problems and I tried to keep my goal simple. I kept saying to myself,  "I'll be happy with just a few good images of the blood red eclipsed moon."  Ev

For a change, the weather in my neck of the woods cooperated with an astronomical event! That alone is a rarity. Even more surprising is that my health cooperated as well! The chances of all of this coming together were slim. I had set up a couple of my cameras earlier in the day. I charged and tested batteries. I chose two lenses... one for each camera. I chose the appropriate tripod head and mounted it on my tripod. Then, I waited. Sheila's parents stopped by for a few drinks before dinner which was nice and occupied my time as we waited for nightfall. We ate dinner, cleaned up and then I noticed the full moon was brightly lighting up the sky outside our living room window. At this point, I was running low on energy so, rather than hauling all this gear outdoors to a good viewing spot, I just set up the tripod at the living room window and shot out the open window.  The problem with shooting from this particular window is that I knew that the moon would eventually skirt b

The moon... crisp, clear skies with no light pollution help in capturing some crisp crater detail. For the most part, the weather at the lake has been beautiful. Most of the clouds and rain have been at night. Getting the rainy weather only at night has been great and makes for a lot of beautiful, sunny days but it really puts a damper on any photography of the night skies. Fortunately, we did have a few nights of clear weather at night... very few. On one such night, I grabbed my tripod, my best camera, a couple of good lenses, and a wireless remote shutter release and headed outside to the dark and very buggy deck. One of the newer cameras I have been using is amazing for low-light work but I am still learning what it can do and trying to figure out how to do different things such as shooting night skies. The unique thing about shooting night skies is that each exposure requires a few minutes plus a couple of minutes of adjusting settings... over and over... until you get

Our moon captured using a Panasonic G3 camera with a Panasonic 45-200mm (90-400mm equivalent) G Vario lens. Anyone who follows this blog knows that I have a bit of an infatuation with the moon and an active interest in aerospace which involves continuous study and research. Consequently, I often will be pointing one of my cameras toward the moon on those seemingly rare clear nights with no clouds obscuring the sky.  Last night we had a sky with a light, wispy cloud cover but our moon was bright and beckoning through our living room window. Needless to say, I grabbed some of my camera gear and headed outside. As I've written in recent blog posts, I just picked up a used camera and lens in the tiny Micro Four Thirds format. I really haven't had much of an opportunity to test it out though for numerous reasons. This was one camera and lens combo that I knew I should test on the moon last night. Most of the night I had to struggle getting clear shots of the moon becaus

I go through spurts of trying to get nice crisp shots of the moon and I think I'm nearing the end of one such spurt. (Which means I will soon spare everyone of these rather boring moon photos!) Full moons are the toughest to shoot because the light is so bright and yet flat. By flat, I mean that the sun is shining on the moon so straight-on that there are very few shadows being cast by all the large features on the moon's surface. It is this lack of shadow that makes for a very 'flat' image. For instance, if I hold a tennis ball out in front of me with one hand and hold a flashlight next to my ear shining on that tennis ball, we won't see any shadows on that tennis ball. If we don't see shadows, we don't see depth.  If I hold the flashlight out in front of me, next to the tennis ball which is also in front of me, we will see a big shadow around one side of the ball as well as little shadows showing the texture of the fuzzy tennis ball. There is much mo

I just thought I would add another shot of the moon here... I had been outside the other night digging my car out of the snow so I could work on it yesterday. It was cold and crisp that night and our snowy landscape was eerily illuminated by the bright, almost-full moon in the sky.  When I finished digging out the car, I went inside and grabbed my camera... swapped lenses for the appropriate lens... and headed back out into the cold. Physically demanding activities like shoveling snow really do a number on me nowadays... obviously, it affects my spinal injuries but it also affects my mast cell disease in various ways which rate from just annoying to dangerous. When I emerged from the house with my camera in my hands, I quickly realized that I had tremors in my hands and couldn't keep the camera as steady as I would like. This is one of the annoying symptoms which can really drag down my photography. Regardless of the shaky hands,  I felt the need to take advantage of the h

I've been stuck in the house for quite some time. Actually, I may have been stuck in the house for the longest time ever... in my entire life... anywhere.  It has been so frigid cold for the past couple of months that I have not wandered from the house for more than a few minutes at a time. These drastic temperature changes caused by moving from indoors to outdoors and then back indoors have been miserable for my health.  Another issue keeping me homebound is that my car has been sitting silently in the driveway, buried under snow, for more than a month. The car won't start so has not even run at all even to warm it up. If we have some tolerable, sunny days sometime soon, then I will get outside to see if I can salvage what is left of the old Honda and get her running again. A 15 year old car in the northeast where salt is used on the roads for more than half the year is an exceptionally old car. I fear we are at the end of this car's life expectancy. There have been

I've really had a few weeks of virtual nothingness lately. I've been laid up on the couch trying to recover from some excruciating and debilitating bone and joint pain. At times, I had to deal with the usual Systemic Mastocytosis intermittent anaphylaxis, nausea and gastro-intestinal issues too. Needless to say, it has not been a very productive month as a result. As I lie on our couch, I have a clear view through our living room window of the moon rising from behind the Worcester Range each night. The moon always captures my attention but considering I've been confined to the living room all day, every day, for the past month, the bright moon rising and shining through our living room window is impossible to ignore.  Two things make this full moon worth mentioning. First, the full moon in September is known as the Harvest Moon which oftentimes is spectacular. Second, this particular full moon is also considered a Supermoon because it is so near the Earth at this time

I went back to the folder which is holding the few images I captured the other night of the "supermoon" to see if there was another image which I might have missed the other night. Sometimes I find it is best to come back to revisit photos a few nights later or weeks later or even months later. These photos get overlooked for various reasons... I'm tired when I first looked at them... the one with the most detail gets lost in a sea of decent photos... and sometimes I just miss the potential of a particular image. In this case, only a few days have passed but I think I did miss a nice image with some impressive detail for a full moon... I was hoping to get outside to shoot some photos tonight but the moonrise is quite late tonight and I am exhausted already. Trying to hold a camera steady while I am exhausted is difficult to do and getting all the camera settings correct at the same time I am exhausted and not thinking clearly is next to impossible.  I still do

Supermoon - 12 July 2014 Last night, our moon was a little closer to our home planet than usual. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as a 'supermoon' because the moon does appear ever so slightly larger in the night sky.  Anyone who has tried to shoot a photo of the full moon realizes that this is a rough task. The moon doesn't really seem all that bright but it really is exceptionally bright especially a full moon. This is why far too many photos of the moon only depict an overexposed, bright white splotch in the sky when they try to capture an image of the moon. You really need to use a camera which allows manual control over your exposure to get this right. Contrary to popular belief, you actually need to set your exposure as though you are shooting on a sunny afternoon... yes... as though you are shooting on a sunny afternoon! Another thing that most people don't understand, or realize, is that the full moon is the worst phase of the moon to try t

Today was a beautiful sunny day for a change! The sky was crystal clear and you could see for miles. This has not happened in such a long time that I actually felt as though I was in a foreign land! After shooting a few quick snapshots of our visiting garter snake (previous post), I noticed the moon in the sky. The moon was behind some branches with some wisps of very small clouds in the sky around it. Naturally, I couldn't resist shooting a few photos of this half moon in the twilight blue sky. My plan was to shoot a color version of this moon so I could capture the twilight blue sky so that is how I set all the settings on my camera... I propped myself against a lamp post... and fired a few shots. It seemed as though I shot a few decent shots which captured some nice detail on the moon while still retaining the twilight blue sky.  As I was processing this color shot of the moon (using my digital darkroom...  my computer), I accidentally selected a quick conversion to bl