52Frames Hold A Light Weekly Photo Challenge

The subject for the 52Frames photo challenge this week was “hold a light.” It took a while for me to come up with an option, and I would need my husband’s help. We have a Holtkotter dining room lamp that sits on the sideboard. It is perfectly round, and when taking a photo from above it could pass for the moon. Then another image was taken - this time with my husband “holding” the lamp. I still didn’t know how it would look until I started to make the composite photo. Both the lamp and the hand were isolated and layered together - it took a bit of patience to get it just right. Then a black backdrop was added to give it a dynamic contrast. It looked good but still needed something. So I started to play around with some additional elements and the snow flake effect looked really good - and I liked it more than the black and white version. Overall it looked almost real compared to some of the more artificial choices. A water effect was also tried, with and without snowflakes, but in the end the original idea stuck. It just looked cleaner and neater. Usually for each challenge several photos are taken and my husband and I try to agree on the best option. I think he preferred the water element, but the snowflakes just looked so much better. 

Apollo on the Washington Monument

It was time to take a trip down to the Mall last evening. We rarely venture out after dark but felt somewhat compelled since we wouldn’t have a lot of opportunity. The Apollo spacecraft image was illuminating the east side of the Washington Monument from 9:30-11:30 PM for just a couple of nights. I didn’t want to miss it, but my husband has never been enamored by space stuff. That includes Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. Our friends in France were astonished that he had no interest in seeing the Milky Way. My brother had a telescope and we spent some time learning about space. One of my science projects was about Venus. Fifty years ago I remember sitting in front of the tv, later in the evening, and watching the event of the first step on the moon with my family. My dad took slide photos of the tv images and I just dug them up. The images are rather poor, but on one of the slides it clearly has written “first step on the moon.” So, it was worth the parking lot drive near the Washington monument to once again witness the event in a very different way. Things like this always bring the crowds to the Capitol city. I’m glad we are still close enough to see them. 

Apollo illuminating the Washington Monument:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0ENlIEhIDb/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0ENshkBb_i/

Moon Event

I'm not sure exactly what the super moon event was last night, or even if it was called that. All I know is a friend of ours wanted to make sure we saw the moon at 11:30 last night. So, as we shuffled off to bed last night at 12:30, I remembered her telling us about it. So I looked through the window, then opened the door on the patio to see a brighter moon than usual. A lot of birds were chirping- which did seem odd at that time of the night. We usually don't get too excited about astronomical events. We were in the south of France about ten years ago. The Milky Way literally was there to grab, it seemed so close to where we were viewing it. Our host got really annoyed when my husband hardly paid any attention to it. I on the other hand, appeared a little more enthusiastic. I used to view the night sky through my brother's telescope growing up in Florida, and did a science project about Venus. We watched the moon landing on TV, and recently watched Discovery pass over the Mall. But that's about as interesting as it gets.

Shining an eerie light below

MOON OVER THE CAPITOL

The weatherman said to get there by 7:30 PM. It was supposed to be the biggest moon in 18 years. Because it was a bit chilly, we drove over to the front of the reflecting pool and sat in the car for about an hour, waiting for the moon to make it's grand entrance. The woman from Maryland, who parked in front of us, was putting money in the parking meter. We told her we didn't think it was necessary. She had an FSU sticker in the window... we chatted a bit about her daughter who went to FSU. I went there too! Her husband had already gone out before her to set up all his camera equipment to get the perfect shot. So we waited for awhile, and waited a while longer. It was worth the wait.

Who do you suppose got the best shot?

We did!