Saturday, August 6, 2016

Moonstruck Again!

There are few things as faithful as the lunar phases. Every 28 days we can count on another full moon and unless my schedule or the weather ruins it I will take every opportunity to try to shoot some more beautiful moonlit portraits. Last month I experimented until I got things the way I wanted them and finally after two nights of shooting I got a great portrait of my son. This month I picked up where I left off in June and almost immediately got a couple more amazing images. The first one is my lovely wife Mary, and with her assistance I even got a selfie.
There is definitely something about the light of the full moon that greatly enhances these portraits. I may have to try shooting similar portraits during the day to prove it to myself but I do not believe that anything else I could do (other than shooting by the light of the full moon), even with studio lighting would produce images as unique and pleasing. This is especially true when you consider I am shooting at f-2.8, ISO 12,800 with a 1 to 1.5 second exposure.


Of course part of the credit must go to the excellent on-board processor of the Pentax K-S1 for the quality of the images. These are jpegs pretty much right out of the camera with very little post processing.