This year we have a new regular post: ‘On this date,’ which I’d considered calling, ‘On this date in history,’ but I decided to shorten the title a little. The premise is, each week I will feature a photo taken on the same date in some past year. I could have made it, for instance, ‘On this date 2010’ but I’m quite sure I would have repeats of titles since I haven’t been shooting for 52 years, much less be able to track dates on most of the slide stuff, and I don’t want to put the entire date in the title (and even then might have repeats,) so we’re simply going sequentially.
There’s also the idea that I may not post on the same day of the week, depending on what I find – I have not planned out the entire year of photos and may paint myself into a corner by sticking to Wednesdays, so suffice to say I’ll find something for each week, whether it be Thursday or Saturday or whatever. As it was, the first of the year was tricky enough – I’ve only found two so far. The winter months are going to be a little demanding, because I have never shot much then given the scarcity of subjects. So we’ll see, won’t we?
That’s enough introduction. Today we have a shot from 10 years ago, as a (nearly) full moon rode high in the sky.
I danced around in my driveway to compose it with the holiday lights strung along my balcony railing, and had to play a little to even get them in the pic – not because of their position, but their brightness instead. The moon is illuminated by sunlight so setting a proper moon exposure is largely like shooting in full daylight, while holiday lights aren’t that bright, and the railing they were on darker still – I’m fairy certain I illuminated it with a handheld flashlight during exposure, or fired off the partially-blocked flash, just to bring out a little detail, and liked the subtle effect here. The railing was a bit closer to me than the moon, so it remained out of focus, and there was no way to increase depth-of-field enough to get both sharp.
Inspired by this and the clarity of the night, I went out just afterward to chase some more subjects using that moonlight. And this just about covers all the photos I’ve taken on the first of the year, or at least that I can determine.