Tag Archives: moonlight

Moonlight Over Canyonlands

Posted on by

2016-04-02DesertMoonlight0651

Moonlight can do strange and wondrous things if you’re lucky enough to be down in the bottom of the canyons under a full moon. The small ravines and gully’s that filter down to the canyon bottom are filled up with the many different grasses that grow here because this is where the water is when there is any.

During the daylight hours these same grasses will appear colorless and faded due to the relentless beating of the sun, but at night when the moon comes out and shines its silvery light on these pockets of splendor they glow with an earthly luminance that equals the best lit studio. Nothing beats Mother Nature when she wants to show off her handiwork.

This vignette was found at the bottom of an unnamed canyon in Canyonlands National Park earlier one evening as the walls blocked the last of the daylight and the full moon rose early. There wasn’t time for setting up a formal shot as the dark was closing in and there was a hair-raising drive to climb out of the canyon before full darkness fell.

So a couple of grab shots taken out of the vehicle window were all there was time for, in fact only two images were taken, but that is often how these things happen. You see beauty, you snap the shutter and you move on. That brief moment lives on in this image for as long as people want to look at it. Which I hope is a long time.

Night Flight

Posted on by

NightFlight3013

Night time in the back waters. Frogs are calling, insects are buzzing, the reeds slowly brush together with a soft rustling sound only slightly louder than the water moving through the channel. This is night in the sloughs. Walking carefully along the wooden planks of the walkways that reach out into the back waters of the Gulf of Mexico, seeing only by moonlight, listening intently for the hiss of an alligator, or the quiet call of a nesting bird, when a misstep causes a plank to creak and suddenly there is a burst of movement as a Roseate Spoonbill takes flight.

It is nearly fully dark with a half-moon barely illuminating the water, too dark really for pictures, but instinct takes over, the camera is raised automatically and a shot is taken. Hopefully there is enough moonlight to catch it. There is no time for camera adjustments or thought about how to take the shot just get it in the viewfinder and press the shutter. There is an immediate reaction as amused you think, “No way that’s turning out, reflexes or not, you’re not getting that shot. “.

Perhaps, I didn’t. According to the photo rule makers who decide how you must take a perfect image, whether it is a good image or not according to the way they see things depends a lot on whether you follow their rules. I guess I tend not to. To me the emotion and feeling of the image is more important than the rules of thirds, or exact focus. Does it grab you or not, that’s the key for me. However you personally view it that’s the way it looked and felt that warm muggy evening on the Gulf of Mexico. What I remember was the sound, the burst of color, and the moonlight on the water. It’ll work for me until I can take a better one.

When I was Just a Young Boy

Posted on by

Japan022click to enlarge

I was just a young boy My fortune yet untold
I have wandered thru the distance
with a camera full of miracles,
Such are promises
All sights are truth
Yet a man sees what he wants to see
And disregards the rest.

When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of killers
In the middle of the induction center,
Being scared,
Saying so,
Seeking out the safer notions
Where I could safely go
Looking for the places
That I would surely know

Lie-la-lie…..

My apologies and thanks to Paul Simon and the lyrics from the Boxer

As you age things occasionally pop into your head in the form of memories, things from the past that are so vivid and real that they could have happened this morning. This one didn’t however, it happened 51 years ago and whenever I revisit this image Paul Simon’s song “The Boxer” accompanies it and the first phrase that I hear is “When I was just a young boy, my fortune yet untold” plays. I know that my version is incorrect and differs from the original but that’s the way I hear it.

It is almost impossible for me to realize that I was only 18 at the time and had already been in the service for a year. I was stationed on the South Pacific island of Guam in the Trust Territories of the United States and had already used up every new experience that place had to offer. Consequently whenever I had the opportunity I would hop a plane and go to Japan. It is difficult to explain the impact that incredible place had on an impressionable young man but I still feel the exotic-ness of those memories over 50 years later. I judge every new experience I have against those memories in fact. At every available opportunity I wandered through their country like it was another dimension, camera in hand, trying to capture what I was seeing and feeling at the time and failing miserably but loving every second of it.

I remember taking what seemed like thousands of pictures but as I search through my files I find only a pitifully few of them, faded pockmarked Kodachromes, colors becoming transparent, fading like my memory, but what treasures they are. I have pictures of open air markets on the docks with the sea smell and raw fish and the sound of a language that was both harsh and wondrous and magical at the same time.

I have pictures of movie posters that featured the latest Japanese productions of Ninja movies that I never missed on a Saturday afternoon with the locals yelling insults at the bad guys and eating fried rice out of paper boxes with chopsticks.

There’s even a photograph of a Japanese girl who I’m ashamed to admit that now I can only remember her first name, which was Midori, but I remember she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. You must remember I was young and hadn’t seen everything yet. But she was lovely.

But the one that stands out, the one that I don’t need to see to actually see if you know what I mean, is the one of the temple in Kamakura pictured above. If I could only describe the thunderous silence that surrounded it and the way the moonlight struck the roof and illuminated the garden and the feeling that what ever you might seek in your life was right here right now, I think I could die a happy man, or at least a contented one.

It’s possible I didn’t have all of those thoughts at the time, I was only 18 after all, and there was the beautiful Midori waiting nearby, but something made me take the picture and that something has stayed with me through the years. Many, many memories and experiences have taken place and added up since then but few equal the intensity of emotion that occurs when I see this image again. Just thought I’d share it with you because it’s rare, at least for me, to have a memory that is over half a century old still so vivid and clear.

Note: For those of you that are interested here is a link to a YouTube video that has the original music and lyrics. Sorry about the ad that runs in front of it, thankfully it’s a short one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYPJOCxSUFc