Saturday, September 20, 2008

Moonlight Madness Sale

















































Moon Light Madness Sale, all images (c) by Kirk Jordan


All in all, these images are kind of ugly, but interesting in their own way. The other day the wife and I were taking a walk on our local walking trail by night, under a sweep of fast moving "curd" clouds overhead. Odd thing, there was hardly any wind movement on the ground. To top it off, the moon was full, and strobing through the sweeping gaps. After the walk I ran back to the trail with a camera and tripod.


In today's new digital climate, it is possible to use "film speeds" that were pretty had to get with film. I shot most of these at 3200 ISO, and packed flash on relatively short exposures of a second or two. The orange color cast is due to city light bouncing into the clouds.


As for exposure length, the one exception would be the picture of the walking trail with blue sky. It is a fifteen second exposure taken near 11PM at night. With the high film speed rating and a long exposure it looks almost like day. You can even see a speckle or two of stars.


--
Old stuff, from the journals of the Kirk.


There, in the dark, in the part that hangs between the moon and me, runs a great river of light. Not just a stream, but a racing ocean. In fact, I am looking through that very flood, to see the lit plane of the moon. And this is strange. Looking though light to see light? Does the light clash?
We know that the moon is not a light unto itself. It bounces a cold bone flame, borrowed from the sun and modified on a surface of chalk. But what if the moon weren’t there. That ‘place’ -- apart from stars -- would be dark. And what if we swung the moon closer, into the present dark between us. It might refract even harder. So it hit me. Light is flowing though that space between the moon and I. And not only there, but all about the moon. Up, down, forward, back. Indeed, If we were to litter the night with moons, every one bending light from the dark, our night might shine like the noonday. But how can this be -- the thing that we call night and see as dark is not a “true” dark at all. The thing is a bastion of unseen light!