Skywatch Friday: The raven and the moon

This week when I stepped outside to take the trash curbside, the sun was bursting in the morning sky. The air was bright and crisp. Didn’t the calendar say it was spring? It seems Old man winter wasn’t going down without a fight.

Ravens resting in a tree. Fotor “gray popper” effect. (f-length 300, f-stop 10, exp time 1/640, ISO 800)

I wanted to experiment with my 55-300mm lens, which I do not use often. It’s heavier than I care to handle regularly and find its an inconvenience to change when we’re on the go. That I hope to correct with our next outing, but on Tuesday I caught a photo of two ravens perched in a bare tree in the distance.

The birds and trees appeared almost like a silhouette against the sky. I knew I would photo-edit the shot to grayscale later after previewing the image. That would suit the picture best, I thought,  with the morning chill biting my fingers making them ache from the cold. Although the sun was glorious, I failed to capture anything worthy to share. I need to practice shooting with my zoom lens and have plans to do that soon.

Instead, I will show you a night shot I took at the beginning of the month. We had just gotten home with my camera and 18-105mm telephoto lens in hand, I captured my first descent moon picture.

First-quarter moon phase (f-length 105mm, f-stop 5.6 exp time 1/500 ISO 100)

It would have been excellent had I used my longer lens, but I didn’t. The original image was slightly underexposed, as you might imagine. It wasn’t bad. I preferred the image be a bit brighter and bumped the exposure up with Fotor.

Next time, we have a gorgeous nightly sky  I vowed to swap my lens out. I won’t promise success in my endeavors, but at least I will try to get what I want without settling. There is so much to re-learn, but in time things will stick.

 

Linking up with other photographers from around the world for Skywatch Friday. Come join the fun!

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