Moon – Stephen's Wildlife

Walking with a purpose

Most of my walking is without a camera. I probably clock up 20 miles a week just doing the school run. Its part of my fitness regime, which I missed out on during the first UK lockdown when schools were closed. Joe Wicks did a sterling job with his online HIIT workouts during that time, although the ‘High Intensity’ element was a bit challenging.

Most days I will join Jacki and Pippin on the daily mid morning exercise walk. I may take my camera on this. I love the countryside of East Dorset. We have an amazing diversity of habitat: woodland, heathland, farmland, riverside walks, lakes, beaches, cliffs and gardens. We also have quite diverse wildlife. One can never be sure what one will see.

The season has an impact on the light, which is quite important for a photographer. I was out over the weekend and the light was constantly changing: bright sunshine one moment and cloud cover the next. I was changing camera settings for every shot and making further adjustment for whether the subject was light on a dark background or dark on a light background.

For the past two years I have focused my photography on wildlife requiring fast shutter speeds, a lot of patience and a sudden flurry of activity lasting only a few seconds. More recently I am trying to introduce more landscape photography. The fundamentals are the same, but the technique is quite different. The landscape isn’t moving so slower shutter speeds can be used and a tripod. The lens is different too. Instead of a long telephoto lens, landscape photography uses more of a wide-angled lens. I am still getting to grips with the technique and will try and share some of my efforts in the blog over time.

This blog post includes some recent shots from heathland walks. First are a couple of landscape shots of Holt Heath in the sunshine. Followed by an excited Pippin. Then we have a few birds: peregrine falcon, yellowhammer, blackbird, thrush and dartford warbler all from heathland locations. As the nights are now drawing in and sunset is about 4.30 pm, there are a couple of moon shots. And finally, a rainbow; we’ve had quite a few of these recently reflecting the changeable nature of the Dorset weather at the moment.

Full moon

It was another clear night, a degree or two warmer than a few nights ago when photographing the waxing gibbous moon. My set up is a DSLR camera body attached to a telescope. Everything is manual, rather than auto, so I had to take one or two test shots to get the exposure and focus right. I had the telescope on a tripod and to get the picture as sharp as possible I used the camera’s 10 second self timer to reduce any blurring from camera shake.

I am a child of the late 50’s and so remember the excitement of the various Apollo missions. I remember names such as the ‘sea of tranquillity’. In the picture above it is the darker patch half way from the centre to the edge between 2 o’clock and 3′ o’clock. Kid’s programmes such as Thunderbirds introduced us to the ideas of space stations and miniature communication devices and computers.

I never quite got to grips with the scale. I didn’t then know that the moon is on average 238,000 miles from earth. The Sun is, on average, 93 million miles from the earth. For anything further away people began to talk about light years and my eyes began to glaze over.

There is a mystery to the universe. I think it is great that science can unlock secrets and technological advances have made it possible for me to take photos of the moon from my back garden with such clarity. But I hope I never lose that sense of mystery…

Waxing Gibbous

Last night was cold. Temperatures were close to freezing. The sky was more or less cloudless. The moon shone brightly and could be clearly seen despite the light pollution. We are in the 7 day phase between a half moon and full moon, the phase of the moon technically referred to as waxing gibbous. Sailors are aware that this is where the tides move from neap to spring. The gravitational pull of the moon moves from being at right angles to the sun’s force (half moon) to being in line (full moon).