Wednesday, June 03, 2015

Mosquito Moon

Yesterday evening, it was going to be a Full Moon evening, with Sunset immediately preceding the Moonrise.  It gave me hope that there'd be enough light to shoot my rig, with the full moon in the sky.

Got to the usual spot with plenty of time, and watched a pretty colorful if cloudless sunset make the front range mountains glow with oranges and yellows:

 above and below shot with my iphone6, not too shabby....


Soon after the sun had disappeared behind the front range mountains, I saw the full moon begin to peek above the eastern horizon.

My angles were all wrong where I had pre-positioned the Sony A5000 camera with tripod beforehand!

There was much hurried re-positioning of camera and tripod as the light grew dimmer with the sun's afterglow fading.  As to the title of the posting, all the shots I took were while being eaten alive by what seemed at times to be a cloud of mosquitoes!  It was a warm muggy evening, and I had removed my helmet and riding jacket, which of course offered up more skin for the mosquitoes to sting!

Here's the best that I got, after post-processing and before the last shot which is a Photoshop composite of the first two photos below:

 The time was very brief, where remaining sunlight allowed a capture of the
rig and the camera could be underexposed to capture detail on the moon.

Straight up shot of the moon, done with the below
Photoshop composite in mind.


Didn't really shoot a lot of shots, a total of only 34 shots with the Sony!  For me, that's very few pictures.  I ran out of usable light, the camera no longer could cope with the disparity of such a bright moon and lack of ambient light for the rig, and I'll admit it; I was chased out of there by all the biting mosquitoes!

one of the mosquitoes caught in the picture

The ride home was nice and cool in the breeze caused by the moving rig.  The western horizon was still aglow with a very pale orange color still highlighting the front range mountains.  It was, quite nice a view.  Keeping a wary eye for wildlife which might be crossing the road, I made it home safe and sound.  

I hope you like the pictures.

Previously: Monkey See, Monkey Do
or
Martha and I go Uraling on Trail Ridge Road

5 comments:

RichardM said...

Imaginative title. Remind you of Alaska?

I like both photos, the actual and the photoshopped one. Though knowing which was photoshopped makes me prefer the other...

redlegsrides said...

RichardM, yep, Alaska came to mind while I was trying to shoot while swatting at the pesky mosquitoes, I was thinking: "this must be what AK is like during mosquito season!"

Unknown said...

The second photo, of Scarlett in nearly full silhouette, is very cool. Is that a standard aspect ratio option for iPhones, or did you crop the image afterwards (I'm not too familiar with iPhone capabilities)?

redlegsrides said...

Thanks Ry but it's just the way I cropped it.

Trobairitz said...

Excellent photos as per usual. Always a pleasure to see.

Thank you for braving the mosquitos.