Thursday, October 5, 2017

“Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.”

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I’m getting ready for bed when I see there’s a message on my phone.

“Have you seen the moon? Grab your camera and go get it!”

It’s the harvest moon tonight; I’ve seen it before. Is it really worth going outside to look at? Or to photograph? I’m more of a macro photographer. My camera is downstairs. I’m in my pajamas. I’m tired.

I pad into the bedroom where Gerry is already reading in bed.

”Can I borrow your long lens?”

It takes time to get everything ready. I go downstairs to my woman cave and get my camera, take it to Gerry’s office area and switch out my 60mm macro lens for his 100-400. I head back into my studio for my tripod, opening it up to it’s full height. Then, gingerly, I carry everything upstairs and set it near the front door.

I step outside to orient myself. Yup. There’s the moon alright.

On the front sidewalk, in silence and my pajamas and bathed in moonlight, I set my camera on the tripod and lean in. I’ve rarely used this big lens and it’s so different from my trusted macro lens. I play with focus, zoom in as far as I can on the orb in the sky, change my camera settings, and snap a few photos.

There. Done.

I carry all of the paraphernalia back downstairs and consider whether or not to boot up my laptop and process the images. I look at the clock.

It takes forever for my computer to boot (I need to do something about that one of these days) and while it hums and grinds I read a few pages from the book I left on my desk earlier. Time is never wasted.

When I finally import my images into Lightroom I’m captivated. Yeah, I’d prefer to shoot macro; and if I had to shoot the moon, I’d rather it was hanging large and low over a prairie field; but there is a certain kind of magic to this image of the moon so solitary and bright.

I like it.

I’m reminded that sometimes stepping outside of my sweet and cozy comfort zone results in new discoveries and opportunities that might otherwise go unrealized. Funny how often I need to be reminded of that.

I move the image to my Dropbox so I can access it on my iPad, shut down my laptop and head upstairs for bed, no longer tired but energized and sort of excited. As I crawl into bed next to my dozing husband I know sleep won’t come for a while. That’s okay. I’ve got a good book on my Kindle to lose myself in for a while.

But first, I reach for my iPad to take another look at the image of that harvest moon. Wonder. Possibility. Seeing the world, literally, through a different lens.

I might have to borrow that long lens more often.