Got a new toy? Well, play with it then.

A few months ago, I bought a new toy. A Nikon camera. Since that time, I've been slowly learning to use it. This camera has a bunch of settings and I have so far, only begun to understand exactly what they all do. 

Oh, I do know for example that a certain knob adjusts the shutter speed. That's all well and good, but what I don't know is how changing the shutter speed will affect the look of the picture I take. I've got to experiment a bit more.  

This post will share with you some of the pictures I've taken of the moon. You will probably notice that they are not all (or even any) what you might expect. They are the results of my experiments in knob twisting...

Taking pictures at night is a real challenge, especially when I have one extremely bright source in the middle of the darkness. I have not yet perfected my technique. You'll see that in these photos. 

Nevertheless, I do rather like what I got. As I reviewed what I recorded, my usual comments ran something like, "Whoa, that's kind of weird, and geez, so is that one, and oof, I think I'll delete that one altogether. No amount of editing will improve that."  

Take a look and don't say I didn't warn you...

This is one of my favorites. I see it as the cover illustration on a Sci-fi story about the moon crashing into the earth.  

Another night...
  

 

Look how in this shot, the moon seems to have stripped the branches from these trees. You'll see that the foliage is back in the next photo.

Clouds complicate matters sometimes.  

In this one, the moon came out blindingly bright.  I thought later that if I had increased the shutter speed, I might have improved it, but I only get one chance when I'm taking these. The moon rises so fast as this magnification that if I fiddled with the settings, I'd lose the tree/moon contact shots.  

I love the craters along the edge.  

I'll keep trying, I'm having fun.     -djf