Been a weird couple of days. We ended up getting absolutely slammed with storms last night with an initial round of hail. As I type, we are probably less than 15 minutes from the start of what looks to be several more rounds of angry weather, except this time with a forecast of ping pong ball sized hail. Mother Nature spurned. Managed to get my butt out of bed early today in hopes of getting at least 13 miles pounded out assuming the ground wasn’t too saturated. What I wasn’t expecting is the highly humid steamy temps – by mile 10 I looked like Johnny Storm had flamed on. Heeding the “Linda Voice” (surgically embedded while I was sleeping) decided to shut it down only to resolve the gnawing defeat by going back out for another 5 right before dinner (and before the storms were supposed to hit). All this to simply say I’m exhausted and decided to go with something we will not be seeing tonight.
How is that for a curveball!?! Technically, more like a knuckleball as there isn’t a perceivable spin. I am in the midst of processing more images from the Vegas and Dauphin trip and wanted to give Brad a break before his next feature. Looked in my queue and decided it was time to finish this draft.
Prepare yourself before you hit the jump, you are about to endure several more moonings!
Need to give credit to Tim over at Off Center & Not Even (link here) for leading me down this path. He has been posting incredible pictures of the night skies (and colorful day skies for that matter) during the several years I’ve had the pleasure of following him. When I encountered this full moon in the Texas sky, decided I’d try my hand at it.
Clearly this type of photography is outside my wheelhouse and definitely wasn’t planning to go this route when the moment came. First of all, I was without stabilizer. These shots are all taken while hand holding the Beast (after a long day of birding which had my arms already drained at that point). In addition, completely clueless on the best settings. Learning on the spot as I changed setting after setting trying to get something other than Spinal Tap’s Smell the Glove album cover.
This also led to a ridiculous amount of time in the digital darkroom trying to get something I was willing to show my readers and hopefully not make Tim break a vessel laughing too hard. A shocking amount of that time was spent trying to figure out color treatments and subject placement. Assuming you have noticed by now, I am practically religious about the “Rule of Thirds”. It takes an Inglourious Basterds torture scene before I give in and put anything in the center Tic Tac square.
Next up, color choices. The first shot was pretty much untouched from when it was taken. The full moon had shown up in early evening and there was still a lot of light blue dominating the sky as the sun was struggling to keep its grip on the day. No surprise, the blue naturally deepened as I continued to fiddle with every dial and button Nikon was kind enough to give me. Thinking back, I should have just grabbed my phone and did some searches – nature has a way of keeping me focused ha.
Grey is likely the expected color choice. That is what our naked eye tends to see and there is definitely comfort in the customary. Hard to really go wrong there, but as it got later and later the sensors started detecting a color shift. Probably getting relief from the oppressive earth dust as it continued to climb. I decided to tweak that out a little more prominently resulting in a blueish/purple feel. Have to say, this treatment has grown on me. Note, all these are different shots, so there are some additional differences such as sharpness and contrast that are also in play.
At this point it was time to experiment. Started playing around with the hues and saturation sliders until I found what has become my favorite look. More tan/sepia introduced. Not to the full levels of the Harvest Moon, just enough to give it a warmer, less icebox feel. Below is the high contrast/detail perspective.
…now a little more saturation and pushed up whites at the cost of some definition.
I will purposely push my images beyond what I think I like just to confirm my final decision. This next one was that push beyond..even more brightness, but ended up losing the moonscape details that puts our imagination into overdrive.
Not sure I could have really done much better with a tripod, but definitely a fun experiment the next time I’m lucky enough to get these same conditions. Now if I want to pull a Peter Lik I can just slap one of these on a night sky shot and wait for the money to roll in .. ha (link here). This is my litmus test to see if Linda actually reads my posts – Peter is her favorite photographer and yes, we have several pieces about the house (none of his moon shots).
Since this blog does cater more to our wildlife subjects, thought I would throw in a few more “wild” shots. These shots are absolutely craptastic and I take full ownership of the horrible execution. Should probably mention we were camping at Choke Canyon in Calliham, Texas back in January 2022. This park sits between Corpus Christi and San Antonio. While trying to figure out how to successfully capture the moon above, something caught my eye when it moved in the nearby reeds.
Linda and I happen to live in “Big Buck” country here in Illinois and very accustomed to seeing nice racks (nice racks and moons, this is turning out to be a salacious post ha). Took me bit for my eyes to strip away the distractions, finally revealing an impressive set of antlers. Kept one eye on the moon and the other on the Deer hoping it would give me a better view before the last of the light lost its grip.
At probably the last few available minutes, the buck stepped out of the reeds and gave me a great look. Thank god for RAW! Pushed everything those pixels had to get you this shot. Hopefully he realizes how lucky he is to be hanging out in a state park – hunters would be salivating up here.
Hope you enjoyed this slight detour while the current chaos around here gets put back under control. Brad is up next while I comb through all the spoils of our recent trip.
The winds picking up, the sky is flashing and nature is in its first bowling frame. Take care everyone, time for me to make sure everything is secured.
Life Intrigued 