Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Late evening at Mousehole.

Late one evening we found ourselves in Mousehole. What caught my eye was the line of coloured lights along the pier. It looked interesting but the sky was too dark to get an image. 
I then moved back a bit to look at the rest of the harbour. With only the slightest glow of light on the horizon and the harbour only lit by the street lights of the village, I had little idea expectation of getting a reasonable image. 


I did a few images and the results were a bit of a surprise. The green glow of the navigation light at the entrance to the harbour  gives an indication of how dark the rest of the scene was. 

The exposure was 30 seconds and during this time the boats moved around a bit. 

With a bit of post production on the image I think it works well.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Cornwall and the Hunt for the Milky Way

After our trip to Leicester we had the offer of some time with friends down in Cornwall.

It has been many years since we managed to spent some time in Cornwall, so we jumped at the offer.

Strangely enough my first thoughts were not about great beaches, cream teas or sun, but, yeah! dark skies.

Ever since I tried some star photographs when I was up in Scotland in the early part of the year. I have been wishing for dark skies, and by dark skies I mean really dark skies. The darkness that you only get away from large towns and villages.

I was hopeful, as we were staying only about 3 miles from Lands End and about 6 miles from Penzance which was the nearest town of any size but the weather forecast was not looking hopeful for clear skies in the evenings, except for the first night.

The drive down was slightly damp in places but we made good time. The sunset was spectacular





I then had to wait and hope that the clouds stayed away. By 10 o'clock it was dark enough to start shooting. My original idea, was to plan some possible shots during the day for a return at night. As I had not had time to look for locations I decided to just walk down the lane from the cottage, wait for all the security lights to go out and see what happens. 



The results were wonderful. The Milky Way was barely visible to the naked eye but looked spectacular in the pictures. A slight splash of torch light illuminated the foreground to give some interest on some shots. 

What was surprising though was how much Light pollution there was in the night sky, even at the tip of Cornwall. The orange glow of the lights from Penzance and nearby farms was enough to overwhelm the darkness on shots taken in most directions and although I was pleased with the images. It looks as though I am going to have to look elsewhere for really dark skies.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Victory Show final images.

Back at work now after a two week holiday and I have lots of images to work on. At the moment here are the last of the images from the Victory Show at Leicester. A bit of HDR processing and and a couple of images that I like.




Sunday, September 08, 2013

Saturday, September 07, 2013

The Victory Show

Staying with friends over the past days we went to a WW2 reenactment. It was really quite interesting with lots of things going on to see and watch.





Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Petworth

It's holiday time!!!

A trip to a national trust property I had not visited for over 25 years.

Petworth house in Sussex. 






Sunset Margaretting

 A nice sunset but full moon stayed behind the clouds.