My New Year's resolution to write more regularly lasted all of one week. I've been working through some pretty mundane stock images most of this month so haven't had anything worthy of writing about on a landscape photography blog. It's better to write nothing than write about nothing I say.
Today I finally came upon an image worth writing about and by pure chance it nicely follows on from my previous post about the Moon illusion.
Back in May last year I planned a night shoot at the lighthouse in nearby Burnham. My intention was to record long star trails in the sky above the lighthouse. It's something I attempted a few years ago but clouds had prevented me from achieving the final image I had visualised on that occasion. Using a digital camera also introduced dreaded noise that my old Nikon used to exhibit in long exposures creating quite a bit of work to remove. That's not an issue with film.
Of course, no matter what planning goes into such an endeavour something quite unexpected often catches you out. My preparation had included careful timing to coincide with an almost full moon for some illumination of the lighthouse and a study of star charts so I knew where to find the Pole star. I could not fail, but after patiently waiting for over two hours to expose one sheet of 4x5 film and one 6x17 frame, my efforts were thwarted by my tripod which had slowly been sinking into the soft sand all that time. My images, although wonderfully exposed, were ruined by the movement.
I came away with just the images I had made before sunset, but that was not a bad thing.
The image here included the moon and made for an interesting comparison to the previous image of the week. That earlier image had used an ultra wide angle lens which had the effect of reducing the moon to a small point. My style of photography these days means I no longer use ultra wide lenses. This image was made using a 150mm lens which on a 4x5 camera equates to a “normal” lens of around 45mm on a full frame DSLR camera.
The moon was nowhere near as small relative to the scene in this picture, but I have nevertheless experimented and enlarged the moon just a little to give it more natural proportions.
I am hoping to have another attempt at those star trails, once I have sourced some large feet for my tripod.
Back in May last year I planned a night shoot at the lighthouse in nearby Burnham. My intention was to record long star trails in the sky above the lighthouse. It's something I attempted a few years ago but clouds had prevented me from achieving the final image I had visualised on that occasion. Using a digital camera also introduced dreaded noise that my old Nikon used to exhibit in long exposures creating quite a bit of work to remove. That's not an issue with film.
Of course, no matter what planning goes into such an endeavour something quite unexpected often catches you out. My preparation had included careful timing to coincide with an almost full moon for some illumination of the lighthouse and a study of star charts so I knew where to find the Pole star. I could not fail, but after patiently waiting for over two hours to expose one sheet of 4x5 film and one 6x17 frame, my efforts were thwarted by my tripod which had slowly been sinking into the soft sand all that time. My images, although wonderfully exposed, were ruined by the movement.
I came away with just the images I had made before sunset, but that was not a bad thing.
The image here included the moon and made for an interesting comparison to the previous image of the week. That earlier image had used an ultra wide angle lens which had the effect of reducing the moon to a small point. My style of photography these days means I no longer use ultra wide lenses. This image was made using a 150mm lens which on a 4x5 camera equates to a “normal” lens of around 45mm on a full frame DSLR camera.
The moon was nowhere near as small relative to the scene in this picture, but I have nevertheless experimented and enlarged the moon just a little to give it more natural proportions.
I am hoping to have another attempt at those star trails, once I have sourced some large feet for my tripod.
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