So, I should be catching up with writing some posts that have images awaiting usage, or editing video, or cleaning up Walkabout Studios, or any number of other things, but instead I went out last night to use the bright moonlight for some experiments. Which turned out okay, really, and that’s better than a lot of experiments that I do, one of which is another waiting post.
The back forty of Walkabout Estates is almost entirely shrouded by trees, with only a patch near the house and over the deck that gets open sky, and that faces between straight up and a little north, so not too much direct sunlight or moonlight there either, especially as we close in on the winter months and the sun and moon get lower. The main pond gets a fair amount or sunlight, but for only half of the day, well after sunrise and into mid-afternoon before the trees again throw a lot of shade; however, many of these are the cypress which will lose their leaves/needles/whatevers pretty soon and so the light will get better. The time was right to use the moonlight on the pond, though.
Yes, that’s all moonlight – this is 115 seconds at f8, ISO 800, and you’re looking at diminutive Duck Island to the left, with the ‘apron’ where the ducks, turtles, and nutria come onshore at lower right. At center, that little patch of brighter water separate from the main body is the channel down to The Bayou, the lower pond. Everything remains shrouded in duckweed, but the yellow cow lilies that once formed a low forest across the water have been decimated again by the beavers, I believe, though the lateness of the season may also be a contributing factor. What has me curious is that the shadowed side of the trees on Duck Island have a notable amount of light showing on them, and I’m not sure what this is from – it might be reflected moonlight from the water’s surface. Weird, anyway.
I changed perspective and focal length a little, and added an element:
I framed for both the moon and the single strand of Spanish moss that hangs down all by itself, though it was more centered than I intended (it’s really, really hard to tell when peering at the viewfinder image by moonlight, or even with the assistance of the headlamp.) I stood in the frame for about 90 seconds out of the 120, right where all the critters come ashore, and had enough of a dark background (and the lighter shirt of course) that virtually no ghostly effect took place even though I wasn’t in the frame for 1/4 of the exposure time. But this gives an idea of how far offshore Duck Island lies, and how small it really is.
I moved over a bit and aimed about 90° to the right to catch a different portion, having to change exposure significantly to do so.
Turtle Island wasn’t quite catching direct moonlight, but it’s those pale trunks visible in the center; this is now 26 seconds at f3.5, ISO 1600, done this way to prevent having star trails from a longer exposure. There are some details at the top that we need to see better:
I could see that the ‘M’ shape of constellation Cassiopeia was peeking almost perfectly from the branches and framed to capture that, even though a lot of the fainter stars came up brighter and made the main stars less prominent, but also captured something that I use Cassiopeia to find: M31, the Andromeda galaxy, is that fuzzy object off of the branch tips to upper right. I didn’t really expect to capture that, but I’ll take it. One of these days, I’ll manage to get it in much greater detail, but this is not bad at all for 26 seconds at freaking 10mm focal length, as wide as I can achieve with my current lens lineup.
And one more.
This is looking in the same direction as the first two images, just a lot further back into the yard; the thin trees of Duck Island can be found peeking between the cypress trunks just left of center. I wanted the wider angle to pick up the shadows of the trunks by moonlight, but the direct light was a little too obscured. The glow to the right, however, is where the streetlamp on the corner peeks into the backyard past the house, about the only place it does, though it shows really well in the front yard. It has a faintly ominous quality to it that I might have to play with some more.
So not bad for a few minutes of playing around, but if I’m going to do landscapes by moonlight, I need to find a more scenic spot. I imagine I can dig something up…