Werewolves & Bats...

To celebrate my one hundredth thousand Blipfoto view, I thought I'd "celebrate" by walking two miles to the Crematorium at 1a.m. in the full-moonlight!

I was so nearly going to be lazy and do the easy thing and simply take a photo of the PC screen chalking up the magic 100,000 figure and then using that as my Blip! Unfortunately though, this great event occurred at 22.41 yesterday and of course, I'd already had a Blip up for that (which got into the Spotlight! - thanks to ALL for that.)

So, back to this image, the full-frame Nikkor 16mm fisheye gets used on the old FX body D700 and the exposure is about 5 minutes. The cloud had bubbled up in front of the full moon and has come across as sorts of bands, as it has scudded slowly across the frame, arcing as per the fisheye effect of the lens.

To view LARGE

Quite an ordeal, it wasn't as freezing cold as the last time I'd tried similar back last December, when I was there too early for the moon to have risen (!!) and getting there and back most of the way by bus! But, it was hardly warm tonight either and my hour and half and only 15 images - ranging up to 8 minutes - meant that I endured some discomfort by the end. The 5 year old D700 and its original batteries were ate up by the continuously long open shutter on 'Bulb' and subsequent processing. Those 15 pics used up 1.5 fully charged batteries!!

Having broken my headphones, I had no music to accompany and to shut out the night's sounds. Every creaking branch, squark, squeal and flap of wings brought out the chills - down the road, the night-crew from RailTrack were undertaking maintenance work on the nearby London to Exeter rail line; an occasional voice and hammer blow rose above the still air...

So, I'm glad to have made use of a full-moon; it's been a while. And I am known to be harsh on those who simply whack their longest lens on out in their back garden and enlarge the full moon to incredible detail. Out of principle, I don't give 5 stars to such as to my mind, it's more about owning a bigger lens than anyone else that gets such folk more stars rather than imagination and skill.

Whether this creation has employed more imagination and skill than those frame-filling shots is of course, entirely up to the viewer but as I warm up now back home with a steaming hot chocolate at 4.30, I have at least made a little effort, for my 100,000th view celebration.