my favorites Moonset at Moraine Park

Comments welcomed.

...masterpiece.

Ryszard

 

I appreciate you taking time to write a nice comment and give a generous rating. Thank you very much.

Ooh, I missed this one! I run out of good adjectives to praise your images with, Larry. This one is so different, stark and soft at the same time. I love it!

Thank you Kim. Taking this one kind of got me in trouble with my wife. It wasn't the picture itself, but the circumstances surrounding it.

 

One Saturday I had planned to head up to Bear Lake at 3:30 AM to take advantage of the full moon. I couldn't sleep so about 1:30 AM I decided to leave early. My wife woke up at about 2:15 and noticed I was already gone. She was not a happy camper about that.

 

If I had waited until 3:30 to leave I would have missed this shot. Every single photo I took at Bear Lake was a bust. There was too much wind and too much motion in the trees. As I was coming back down the hill I saw this scene. The moon was setting so I didn't have a lot of time. I took three photos. This was the first. The third one was a 107 second exposure. The moon went down and the light completely faded to black while I had the shutter open on that one.

 

This kind of photography is really a crap shoot. You are bound to end up with more failures than successes. I took about 25 shots by moonlight and this is the only one I was happy with. But I am very happy with this one.

 

The biggest problem is getting the right exposure. You have to use the bulb setting on your camera and manually control when to close the shutter. I don't wear a watch and even if I did I wouldn't have been able to see the second hand. I fell back on counting one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, etc. That may not be precise but it works. I was going for a 40 second exposure on this shot and ended up at 35. That was good enough.

I hope she forgave you! There are certainly worse addictions! Knowing how long to leave the shutter open is still way over my head, but I'm slowly learning new things. I print out lots of your "tutorials" and keep them in my "how to" book for later reference. This one is so unique!

It's an awesome shot Larry :)

Thank you very much Nova. If I could only keep a half a dozen of my photos, this would be one them. I am glad you like it. :)

Wonderful capture Larry.

Thank you Dimitris. Its nice to know older submissions still get viewed on occasion. :)