Visibly different, part 47

Al Denelsbeck

This one was inspired when I was going through the folders and realized I had a counterpart that was just done recently (like, since the last Visibly Different post.) We start back in October 2009.

night exposure moonlit self-portrait with Orion
Part of the reasoning behind this was wanting a portrait of myself to use for promotional purposes, only not serious ones – I’m never going to be a realtor so I don’t need the ‘warm smile in some studio’ headshot, plus I scare people. This one was a self-portrait that didn’t quite work, so I eventually settled on the one seen here, which probably should be updated.

But it was also a moonlight experiment, and a ‘ghost image’ one, since I was purposefully present for only part of the exposure, while the camera (the one in the frame – well, both, actually) was present the entire time – the idea was that the camera had a ‘real’ presence while mine was incidental. Hah! Such fartistic commentary! Which would have worked much better against the open sky than the trees, which is largely why it wasn’t ever used. Except for the obvious reason that I scare people.

By the way, despite the various shortcomings, this is a self-portrait, and not a fucking ‘selfie’ – selfies are vain and inept things done with a smutphone and an absence of cognition. Know the difference.

Now we come to this past Saturday morning.

night sky exposure semi-self-portrait
I just cropped this tighter from the version posted a few days back, to emphasize the similarities a little, because this is the exact same spot, and I’m pretty sure those are the exact same stars up there – I mean, they’d gotten out of my sight between the two frames, so I can’t rule out substitutions, but…

Unless you were really checking the background details, though, you might never realize that they were the same location (much less the same person.) The primary clue is the orientation of Orion at the lakeshore, pinning down the view direction and suggesting a closer look, but the lake is so different between the two, especially the water level, that it’s easy to slip past. The base color register throws things off, as does the focal length which shifts relative positions within the frame. The exposure time of course – the first pic was 25 seconds while the second was 303. Though it looks like that outermost tree has died in the intervening years, I think that’s actually a piling you see in the latter pic since it was shot at a slightly different angle. It’s clearly not intended to let us see the figure now, so the underlying ‘mood,’ for want of a better word, has changed. And there’s the suggestion that the temperatures were significantly different, because despite what little you can tell from the shadowy figure in the latest pic, it’s obviously not in short sleeves…

Woo hoo, exciting, right boys and girls? Yeah, c’mon, it’s effectively winter here, except not the kind with snow (yet.) We’ve entered the slow season and the pics will reflect this. Hey, think how I feel…

* * *

A note about exposures like this: If you want to try them, the primary thing to keep in mind is relative light – it’s not the amount of time that something is within the frame that dictates its ‘strength,’ but how much light it reflects. In the top frame, even though the camera is there throughout the exposure while I’m not, the camera only reflects highlights from its black surface, which were still much dimmer than the light reflecting from my hand, so I should have been in the frame much less time. The dark background didn’t help at all, and it should have been against clearer sky (I was purposefully keeping Orion in the frame, so this had an impact, plus the fact that I wasn’t in the frame while framing it.) The brightness of the clothing makes a difference. The best thing is to shoot a bunch of frames with varying percentages of your ‘ghost’ within the frame – 20% of the total exposure time, then 40%, and so on (I think the bottom frame was 40%, but this was also a brighter background.) Holding still is paramount of course, and the closer the portrait the worse this will become. It may take a while (like multiple sessions) before you get the effect you were after. Or you may snag it in one frame.

Make-believe

Al Denelsbeck

It’s cold out there, so let’s pretend it’s nice and balmy, and to assist this I provide a summer shot, a big one.

stitched vertical panorama of Carpenter Falls, Skaneateles NY
This is from 2009, and is actually three images stitched together vertically. Curiously, it looks like I was using a faster shutter speed for the topmost image because the water isn’t blurred as much there, but this isn’t true – all frames are the same shutter speed, it’s just the water that’s accelerating of course.

This is Carpenter Falls off Skaneateles Lake in central New York, by the way – I keep wanting to call it “Carpenters” but that’s not correct. What isn’t apparent is scale, so I provide another image from much higher up.

tourists behind Carpenter Falls, Skaneateles NY
low angle shot of Carpenter Falls, Skaneateles NYI don’t know who these people are, but they did manage not to fall in.

And one more, because it’s the oldest image in the blog folder and has been there for years, and I figure it’s time to either post it or delete it. Since I haven’t been shooting much recently (even when trying,) that means we get this. I was right down in the water for this one, but that doesn’t mean much – with nothing here for scale either, I’ll just tell you that the foreground ‘torrent’ is perhaps 20cm high. But yeah, nice and refreshing in the heat of the day, washing away the sweat and grime from our sandaled feet, the crashing of the water causing small gusts of random breezes laden with cool moisture that couldn’t be found in the still air outside of the valley. Am I selling this enough? Should I mention bunched, sweaty underwear or a lingering lockerroom aroma? That headachey, nauseous feeling when we’ve been working too hard in direct sunlight with too little hydration? How about that yellow-orange filter filmmakers adore for shots of the deserts or Mexico? You know the hue – the director of photography of CSI: Miami must’ve bought a gross every season. But not cold, no sirree.

Pfeh

Al Denelsbeck

So not only did I get out to view the ‘peak’ of the Leonids meteor shower on Thursday night/Friday morning, I returned on Friday night/Saturday morning for the predicted surge. Though you wouldn’t know it in the slightest – yeah, it was that bad. The first night was notably cold, dropping below freezing, which I realize doesn’t hold a candle to some northern weather but it’s still miserable standing almost motionless on the edge of a lake for over an hour, and my sinuses were protesting painfully. I had two cameras with me, as suggested in an earlier post, but the second one used older batteries, nor was it fully charged, and as a result it pegged out after twenty minutes. I warmed the batteries in my hands in my pockets for about ten minutes and got another exposure out of them, but that was it. Waste of time anyway.

ten-minute time exposure of night sky pinned to Polaris
This was ten minutes at f8, ISO 400, looking mostly north as you can see – semi-dark in that direction, but near the one meteor that I saw for both nights – just, not while either camera was aimed that way. I couldn’t even find evidence of a satellite. This was the first night, by the way, and I took a moment and boosted ISO for a detail image without (noticeable) star trails:

night exposure showing Orion, Taurus, Pleiades, and Mars
This is with the ultra-wide at 11mm (thus the leaning trees from fisheye distortion,) 30 seconds at f8 and ISO 6400, and shows Orion slightly left of center, Taurus above and to the right of that, with the Pleiades cluster further in that direction. The bright star at lower left is Sirius, while the brightest star isn’t; that’s Mars, between the horns of Taurus. Clicking on the photo will provide a larger version for more detail (and more noise, but whatcha gonna do?) Technically, Uranus is in this photo too, right on top of another star that’s dimmer, so at least one of those little dots is mostly light from Uranus – I’ll let you find it with Stellarium if you like. It was a distinctly clear night, and except for the cold it was ideal for watching a meteor shower – shame one didn’t show up. I would have braved the cold longer had I seen more than one brief, tiny little meteor, but it was clear that the show wasn’t going to be engaging.

I returned the next night because ‘they’ predicted a possible surge about 1 AM, and I was dedicated enough to be ready for it. But the humidity had rolled in heavily, obscuring all but the brightest stars, and I knew the bounceback from light pollution would make exposures much worse.

night exposure in hazy conditions showing Orion and Mars
That’s Orion again near center, Mars near the top of the frame – only 200 seconds this time at f8, ISO 400 and you can already see too much sky glow. This was the clearest portion of the sky, too – to the west, brilliant Jupiter was barely visible through the heavier clouds, so nothing else could be seen, and all but the brightest fireball would have been obscured. I made a few attempts and waited to see if the sky might clear, but if anything it was getting worse and absolutely nothing made an appearance.

I tweaked one of the exposures just for the sake of it, though:

night crepuscular rays from Durham against too-humid sky
All I did was boost contrast a little to enhance the effect – the crepuscular rays really were like this. This isn’t from the sun or the moon, but from the city of Durham, a 300-second exposure, and I couldn’t tell you what caused the shadows in the light pollution, but combined with the star trails it almost takes on the appearance of a blast. I’m guessing from this that the humidity layer was quite low, but that’s only a guess. By the way, I just spent too long trying to determine which stars are actually visible here, but can’t pin them down, even though I knew which way I was aimed.

One last, for giggles:

night exposure over Jordan lake showing Orion, Mars, and bystander
Yes, that’s Orion and Mars again – and me, holding still in the frame for two minutes out of the five that the exposure took. You can see how bad the horizon was getting. I was alone out there, so I had no idea how it was framed, and it wasn’t worth further playing around – shame that two cars passed after I’d left the frame, otherwise there’d be a nice gap in their lights and reflections. Maybe next time.

But yeah – typical luck with a meteor shower. This is getting tedious.

Those ugly signs

Al Denelsbeck

Nobody likes getting old, which means we deny the signs too often, trying to pretend it’s not happening to us, or not as fast as it is for others. But occasionally the evidence rears up and attempts to bite our noses off.

Back in August I was on an outing and spotted several snakes, considering myself pretty sharp-eyed for finding them, and featured the images herein. Yet just as I was going through the stock folders for images to use in the previous post, I suddenly find I’m not as slick as I liked to believe.

image of more than one northern water snake Nerodia sipedon sipedon
This is full frame, with my target nicely centered, the one I spotted at the time. But how the fuck did I miss its companion?

two northern water snakes Nerodia sipedon sipedon
That’s not a handspan away, and more exposed that the one I focused upon, and while it was using the roots to advantage, I was right there taking several frames of the first and didn’t see it until cruising through the stock images months later – I even missed it when sorting. It would have been even more embarrassing if the second was visible in the post, but I’d shifted for more of a profile angle for that image.

Don’t talk to me. I’m gonna binge on Metamucil smoothies and Matlock. Maybe develop some film. Keep that damn music down.

Visibly different, part 46

Al Denelsbeck

brown anole Anolis sagrei displaying dewlap
Our opening image comes from 2004, in Florida, the territorial display of the brown anole (Anolis sagrei.) That big sail under its chin, called a dewlap, is only displayed when a male anole is marking its territory, typically when another is nearby, though I’m unsure if there can also be a sexual element to it. What I’m drawing attention to here, however, is the bright orange color with the yellow border, helping identify the species. You might think the “brown” part of its name is sufficient, but the Carolina anole (formerly known as the green anole,) can also turn brown when the situation warrants, though it is not as mottled as this, usually only showing variation in a diamond pattern down the spine. The brown anole, however, remains brown.

Contrast this with the dewlap of the Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis):

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis displaying dewlap
While catching it backlit can make it take on an orange-ish hue at times, the dewlap of the Carolina anole is brilliant pink and lacks a border color. I used to believe that they would only do this at the appearance of another anole, but multiple times this year I’ve witnessed this at my presence with no other anoles visible, so either they’ll do it on principle regardless of the interloping species, or I’m even odder-looking than I believed (though I think anoles have a great appearance so I’ll take it as a compliment.)

But then there’s this, from two years ago:

territorial display of male Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis
Same species as immediately above, but different circumstances; this one was in an active, aggressive and physical dispute with another male, and so we see a different display, with the dark ‘eyeshadow’ and the raised crest on the neck, and possibly even some deepening of the green along the snout. If they do this for you, you’d better get ready to throw down, because they certainly will. Always happy to help protect my readers, no matter how imaginary they are.

It’s that season

Al Denelsbeck

Coming through the kitchen yesterday, I saw something cutting across the sprawling frontage of Walkabout Estates, and quickly grabbed the camera.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus buck in author's front yard
Just a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus,) a moderate-sized six-point buck, which normally don’t start becoming visible until dusk, though this was middle afternoon. I shot this through the storm door glass, where it apparently couldn’t see me because of the reflection; when I opened the storm door for a clearer view, it bolted, thankfully towards the back and not the road.

For trivia’s sake, the reddish-brown mass in the foreground is the Japanese maple that has formed the setting for so many of the images herein, and in the upper left corner of the background you can make out a branch of the oak-leaf hydrangea, which has served as well.

It’s rut season for the species, which means they’re present on the roads a lot more often, and a lot stupider – never the most astute of animals, white-tailed deer become very single-minded this time of year and often remain unaware of cars, so keep your eyes open. Know, too, that there’s rarely ever one; if you see one clear the road ahead of you, another may follow soon afterward, sometimes a whole herd. I can’t count the number of times I’ve spoken to people who saw the first but struck a follower, assuming that the coast was clear. Stay vigilant.

One of these days…

Al Denelsbeck

… I’ll feel justified in making this yearly post.

If you’re checking out that sidebar where it shows what posted around this date on previous years, you may notice a pattern: we’re coming up on the peak of the Leonids meteor shower, which may be visible all throughout November but reaches maximum activity on the 17th/18th. More or less, anyway – they’re actually calling for a surge early on the 19th, so you may want to plan on a couple of nights to check things out.

I’ve mentioned before that the 2001 Leonids were spectacular, though I got no images whatsoever due to a mistake in the film I was using. Since then, I’ve seen practically bupkiss. Except, I may have already seen one this year, Tuesday night while out in Washington. I was sitting at the computer in a darkened room looking out a window over the town, in a relatively dark residential area, and saw a flash and a momentary tail. I initially took it for headlights reflecting off of a wire, before I realized that it was probably too high in the sky for there to be any wires there, not to mention that it was nigh vertical. I checked the same vantage in daylight the following day and confirmed that there was nothing but open sky in that spot. Considering that I couldn’t even see any stars out the window, this was probably a bright one – it would have left a nice trail in a time exposure.

If you’re thinking of trying for photos, there are some basic tips, but these are only rough guidelines.

Focal length: 35-80mm or so – While a wider focal length will show a broader view of the sky and thus more chance for meteors, they’ll also be smaller in the frame, and you really don’t want to reduce an impressive fireball too much.

Focus: Switch to manual and use a handy target to pin down focus – Usually the beacon of a radio tower, or any lighted object several hundred meters away – even the moon. Don’t allow the camera to ‘hunt’ for something to focus on in a dark sky and ruin the frames.

Aperture: f8 to f11 – depth-of-field means nothing here, but most lenses are sharpest stopped down a little.

ISO: 400 to 1600 – Judge on your own how much noise is produced by your camera at such settings. Also pop off a baseline frame with the lenscap on for noise reduction. But while we’re talking about that…

Turn off in-camera noise reduction – Unless your camera is really slick in this regard, noise reduction can take a lot of post-exposure processing time, preventing you from getting any more frames while this is happening, and may actually remove stars from the image. Better to do this after the fact.

Tripod and remote release – Lock the camera down, and set the shutter speed to B with a remote release, or the longest exposure you can without it – you don’t want to be manually holding down the shutter for a period of time because you’ll introduce camera shake. Also best to turn off image stabilization – it can get squirrely when used with a tripod anyway.

Where to aim: Don’t worry about the radiant – I’ve never seen too much activity while focused near the radiant – that just gives an average direction that they appear to emanate from, but they might appear anywhere, so you may have more luck by picking a darker portion of the sky. Higher is generally better because there’s more ambient light near the horizons.

Exposure length: Anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes – The longer you go, the longer the star trails go, but the more faint details you might pick up. Just leave only brief periods between exposures to reduce the chance of missing a meteor. The wee hours after midnight start to become best for meteors and reduce the number of satellites that can reflect the sun in your frame – there are buttloads of them up there anymore. If you have the opportunity to use more than one camera, go for it – it can only help.

Find a way to get comfortable looking almost straight up, and dress warmly.

The gibbous moon will be present for portions of the viewing times, and unfortunately right near the radiant, but again, aim away and don’t worry about it. A lenshood won’t hurt either, but it’s the moonlight illuminating the atmospheric haze that will have the worst affect on your exposures, so aim well away if you’re able. Sit back and be patient, and know that meteors are both intelligent and perverse and will usually appear outside of the angle your lenses are covering. You might try a dummy camera and see if they tumble to that.

Good luck!

On the waterfront

Al Denelsbeck

waterfront view in Washington, NC
I mentioned taking a trip recently, which was to Washington, only not that one, and not that one either, but the one in North Carolina – the first town to be named after George Washington, as they proudly proclaim. Well, not the whole town, or really anyone living there that I heard, but on a plaque in a park, anyway. Washington sits on a river delta off the inland waterway, the open expanse of mostly-salt water that sits inside the barrier islands of the Outer Banks, and this delta is known as the Pamlico River even though it was the Tar River not two kilometers away and the flow there is more wind-driven than drainage from upstate, but hey, I didn’t name it. It is a fairly historic area and a relatively small city – in fact I’m not even sure the population makes it to the official definition of ‘city,’ which probably tells you enough. The Girlfriend and I had a little time to poke around the first evening, mostly around the downtown district that I didn’t bother with photos of, but also on the waterfront around sunset. The sky was crystal clear and thus wasn’t promising anything for sunset, but we hung around anyway.

sunset with sailboat on Pamlico River
I’m not sure the cause of the distinct halo around the sun here, but I suspect it was created from the aspherical lens – it was not visible in person. It’s added another experiment to my list, to shoot sunset with several different lenses in my arsenal to see which ones do it and how badly.

I set my alarm for before sunrise the next morning, even though the forecast wasn’t encouraging – we were due for clouds spawned by Tropical Storm Nicole, though when I got up I could see a faint hint of light on scattered clouds and so grabbed the camera and trotted down to the waterfront again (no I didn’t – even though it was only a few blocks from where we were staying, I don’t run, at all, and so only strolled down there.) But there was a thick band of clouds to the east that looked like it was going to be a bully at sunrise. Meanwhile the moon, fully eclipsed only 24 hours before, was riding bright in the twilight.

moon at twilight behind sailboat mast
With first light the seagulls had become active and were wheeling madly throughout the bay, and I realized that with a little patience I might pull something off. It only took a few minutes.

seagull silhouetted against full moon with sailboat, Pamlico River
Could be better, but I’m not complaining, seeing how often I’ve attempted something of this nature (mostly with the sunrise) and how little time I spent trying to get it this session. It was damn chilly out, but the birds were reasonably active, or at least visible, as in the case of a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) just off the docks.

great blue heron Ardea herodias chillin' on Pamlico River
This guy is apparently a routine fixture in the area, at least judging by the comment from a passing resident. By the way, I’m normally a reserved person in public, generally just nodding or muttering a brief greeting even with our own neighbors here, but I was almost forced to blurt out chipper, “Good morning!”s to everyone that passed me on the docks and streets, which was a lot – it’s one of those communities. Nobody seemed in need of coffee. Except maybe this guy.

double-crested cormorant Nannopterum auritum and kayaker on Pamlico River
No, not the double-crested cormorant (Nannopterum auritum) on the piling, but the paddle-kayaker beyond, bundled up against the chill and near-constant breeze out on the water – that’s fisherfolk for you. There were plenty of cormorants though, mostly staking territory on prime pilings while waiting for the fish to get active.

quartet of double-crested cormorants Nannopterum auritum on pilings in Pamlico River
By the way, that’s a rotating trestle bridge for the rail line that crosses the river back there, which I suspected was long decommissioned, but Google Earth shows it in closed position back in 2016 at least, so maybe not – we never saw any trains cross it (or even attempt to) while we were there, anyway, and I was taking this photo from the rail line itself. As well as this one:

seagulls flying over duck flotilla, Pamlico River
Seagulls in the air, ducks on the water, and this was as good as the sunrise got, though later in the day we got scattered sunshine. Having never seen a flock of ducks this large hanging out (and I only have half of it in the frame,) I endeavored to determine what they were, hampered significantly by the fact that they weren’t very close to shore and disinclined to do anything but flap occasionally as ducks do, I suspect to cover their flatulence. Nonetheless, I zoomed in as far as the 18-135 would allow (the only lens I was carrying that morning) and cropped tighter afterward to see what I could.

flotilla of North American ruddy ducks Oxyura jamaicensis snoozing on Pamlico River
Despite the fact that all of the males, which typically have the most identifiable plumage, were keeping their bills tucked in sleep position, the white patches on the face peg these as ruddy ducks, or North American ruddy ducks to be precise (Oxyura jamaicensis,) compact little ‘fun size’ ducks that look a lot better in breeding plumage (wow, that was eleven years ago!) Typically, they’re not in this region except to overwinter.

After the failed sunrise, I wandered around a little just to check out the area, mostly in the historic residential section where we were staying. Plenty of old homes in varying conditions – it’s not technically ‘seaside’ but close enough to be hell on wood buildings – and lots of cats, more than I’ve ever seen anywhere. Some showed distinct signs of ownership, some didn’t.

black longhaired cat under ginkgo tree
I wasn’t shooting architecture, mostly because it’s not my thing, but partially because even though its public, the owners control the rights to publish and I respect privacy. The cat, however, can take me to court if it thinks it has a chance – it would only be a matter of time before it knocked the judge’s water glass from the bench and got a Contempt of Court charge, so have at it.

I’ll close with a little bit more fall color, the tree right next to the house we stayed within, courtesy of Karen and Todd – many thanks, guys! Only a few leaves showed a reddish blush, so I tried to make it look like a normal thing. We will likely return to the area in summer and check it out some more.

changing fall colors on some kind of maple, probably

That’s 2 for ’22

Al Denelsbeck

As indicated a couple of days ago, I went out very early Tuesday morning to catch the total lunar eclipse, the second for 2022, and just less than six months apart to boot.The next total lunar eclipse won’t be until March 2025, because whoever schedules these things is wobbly, but there will be a partial lunar not quite a year from now (for this area, anyway,) and a total solar eclipse in April of 2024. That won’t be quite here, but neither was the last, and I have friends in the totality band so I intend to be visiting them when that one occurs. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

total lunar eclipse of November 2022 beginning
Because of the early hour of the morning when this was going to occur, and the fact that The Girlfriend and I were scheduled to leave on a trip a little later on that day, and the fact that I already have lots of photos of a lunar eclipse starting, I didn’t arrange to get to my viewing spot until just after the umbral phase began, which is the bit where an eclipse is obvious. I used this time to shoot numerous frames on manual focus and examine them closely in the LCD preview at high magnification, to know that I had focus sharp; when it comes to lunar details, autofocus (or at least my own) isn’t precise enough to trust, so I fuss with it until it’s as sharp as I can arrange.

total lunar eclipse of November 2022 roughly 1/3 progressed
A short ways in, I switched to using the 2x teleconverter, which with the Tamron 150-600 provides somewhere around 1000mm focal length. But the teleconverter has a faint color cast to it, not noticeable in most circumstances but visible in moon shots back-to-back. It would be easy enough to correct, and not even worth the bother – I could assume that the moon should be neutral grey and still be dead wrong, due to atmospheric filtering.

comparison of partial lunar eclipse to normal crescent phase moonNow we have a pair of comparison frames, of the eclipse on top and a similarly-shaped crescent phase on the bottom. If you know moon phases, there’s really only one small bracket of time during an eclipse when it might be mistaken for a normal moon phase, because the Earth’s shadow isn’t shaped properly to match the shadowed moon except for one period of time – granted, this lasts for a few minutes so it doesn’t require exquisite timing. But these two frames show that they really can’t be mistaken for one another if you’re familiar with the moon, because the shadows of lunar geography thrown by the oblique sun angle in normal moon phases aren’t present at all during an eclipse. It also shows why full moon shots are far more boring that partial phases, when the details really stand out, even as small as I’m showing here.

Then there’s also the trait that moon phases have a really distinct terminator, the shadow line, while eclipses show much more of a gradient, and during this period you can see the effect of the penumbral shadow better, though it helps to have something to compare it against like this. For trivia’s sake, I’ll point out that the moon rarely passes directly through the middle of the Earth’s shadow, so the ‘phase’ mimicked by the eclipse is cocked out of line with the true lunar phase, but the moon also wobbles a bit so the true phases also wander, being aligned perfectly with the poles only two days out of every 28 – the match here is damn close and merely coincidental, though you can see the difference if you compare the mares carefully.

A little better than halfway to totality, I did an experimental frame:

total lunar eclipse of November 2022 overexposed before totality to capture earthshine
All during the advancement towards totality, there is still light from Earth reaching the shadowed side of the moon, and this becomes more noticeable as the eclipse progresses, though it’s a lot harder to photograph, and this demonstrates why. I changed exposure drastically to bring this out, but it was still too early to be doing this: the light from the uneclipsed portion blew out the exposure and caused glare and ghosts. Trying again a mere fifteen minutes later produced better results:

total lunar eclipse of November 2022 about 4/5 progressed
For the record, this is about 12 minutes before astronomical totality, though when you’re photographing at higher magnification, this distinction becomes noticeably arbitrary.

total lunar eclipse of November 2022 just into totality
This is about four minutes past reaching totality, and there remains an edge that shows more white light than red; the image from two days ago is right when ‘totality’ occurred, and you likely wouldn’t consider that one quite there yet. I’m comfortable that my timing is correct because I’d just reset my watch for DST idiocy and so it was compared against UTC, though I forgot to set the camera until I was out there during the eclipse.

total lunar eclipse of November 2022
This is 11 minutes later, and it appears brighter only because I was tweaking exposure to see what I could get without motion blur from the moon moving (or the Earth, to be pedantic, or both, to be astronomical.) This exposure was 1 full second at f6.3, ISO 1600, about the limits both to avoid motion blur and to prevent noise from overwhelming the frame. Though it was with the teleconverter which loses two stops of light, so that’s more like f13. For comparison, the first image in this post was at 1/200 second, f11, ISO 200 – accounting for the teleconverter, this means the image above was letting in 10.33 stops more light than the first, or over 1,000 times as much light (it doubles every stop.) If this seems ridiculously high, know that doubling light isn’t as drastic as it sounds – this image is 66% brighter than the one immediately above it, shot at f8 instead of f6.3, which is 2/3 of a stop.

While the moon was going to set while still eclipsed, I didn’t stick around for this. I had toyed with the idea of placing it alongside some distinct landmark or something scenic in the foreground, but the low level in the sky was going to hamper this – it’s too easy to be obscured by trees and buildings, and few landmarks in the area are particularly tall, nor in dark-sky conditions. Not to mention that the size of the moon doesn’t compare well against virtually anything, unless you can shoot those from a great distance as well so the moon is larger in perspective. So as the moon dropped lower, I switched the tripod quite low and framed the moon among some foreground bare tree branches.

total lunar eclipse of November 2022 through tree branches
I used my pocket flashlight to illuminate the branches, which were way too close to even try to get into focus, and shifted a little to place the moon in the gaps, kinda. This was as fartsy as I got, because I still needed a couple more hours of sleep to get out on the road later on. But if you search around, I’m sure you’ll find other examples where people made the effort to be more creative.

And yes, I have a handful of photos from the recent trip, so they’re on the way.

Oh, I can’t decide

Al Denelsbeck

While on a quest last week, which I’ll go into later, I got three very similar images faintly representative of autumn, and I’m agonizing over which is the best one to feature. So I’m putting them all up, and encouraging you to pick your favorite and ignore the others.

autumn leaves on Morgan Creek
These are all on Morgan Creek in Chapel Hill, which ran behind the apartment complex that I lived within when I first moved to NC, and I was trying to find the shooting location of a particular photo from many years ago. I was unsuccessful, but there are some clues in what I did capture (not these, of course,) that I might have come close.

autumn leaves on Morgan Creek
One of these has had its contrast boosted slightly – I’m not saying which one – but otherwise they are as shot. Well, okay, I cropped for stronger effect too. Happy now?

autumn leaves on Morgan Creek
They sky was bright and mostly clear, while the trees, being so close to the water, had advanced more in their autumn process than much of the surrounding area and had already shed too many leaves – I should have been there at least a week sooner, but the schedule didn’t play out for that. I did work with the reflections though, so make sure you take those into consideration.

I’d be back with the winning votes, if I had readers, but let’s put it this way – this is one election you have virtually locked. When are you going to get that chance again?

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