Two failures

Moon Hunt:Summer is half as long as I wish it to be, and passing twice as fast as it should be. The last chick of the season left the nest today, I saw it; the cantaloupes are out on Raymond Shirk’s farm (he grows the best cantaloupes in this hemisphere, I don’t know); and the corn is as tall as a man. Summer is passing quickly.

Last weekend, I noticed on the apps that moonset and moonrise were happening at roughly the same time, around 8:45 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, at 8:45 a.m., I was driving slowly along the country roads of the high plains, looking for the moon. Funny, though. The air was clear on the sunset side and the moonrise side. look at The sky was clear, but there was a cloudy sky in the distance, which enveloped the moon until it was more than ten degrees above the horizon. Eventually, it emerged from a hazy glow in the overcast sky and headed toward the brighter sky. By then, the chance to balance the light had passed.

The next night, I finally saw a brighter glow appear in the dark sky, but again, not until it was well above the horizon. I positioned it next to a silo near a barnyard where a single outdoor light illuminated a single pickup truck. But the moon couldn’t really stand out behind the haze, and it was already too bright compared to the sky and the rest of the scene. I experimented with a few exposures. I have a vague idea that if I understood Photoshop better, I could merge two exposures together to make a passable illustration of what I might have seen if things had gone better. But to be honest, I sometimes lack the motivation for this kind of thing. If the image isn’t there, there’s no point in forcing it, unless for some reason you have to.

Bonfire in the forest:I recently had an even bigger failure, and I still blame myself a lot. And I still blame myself a little. My neighbor Les and his wife, who live on the lake, have a big field up the hill. Two years ago, they hired Mennonites to clear a couple of acres of forest. The clearers created a big, messy pile of trees at the bottom of the hill, which Les told me they would eventually burn. Imagine four or five tractor-trailers parked next to each other, that’s about the size of the pile. For two years, it sat there, drying and settling, with grass and weeds growing all around and through it.

A month ago, I was driving by on my way to a regular appointment in Watkins Glen and I could hardly believe my eyes. The Mennonites had taken all this wood and stacked it tightly in a shape that looked like an elongated church dome. It was at least thirty feet high. The rough branches and twisted trunks were so artfully put together that it looked like a complete puzzle or an art installation. And they must have had a crane. At the very top, they had placed a giant stump, its roots intact and reaching down into the woods below. I saw it around dusk on a cloudy day. It was incredible. Especially on a dark, gloomy night, it seemed timeless and mystical, like some kind of druidic offering to the gods in the mists of time. I knew I had to come back with the camera and that it was worth coming back again and again until I got it THE shot.

But did I? A week later, while making the same weekly trip to Watkins Glen, I passed the huge bonfire-shaped structure again and had the same thought: I absolutely had to photograph it before it disappeared.

The third week, same trip, I didn’t think about it until I was heading up the hill. Then I went past the woods that blocked the view of where he was and saw a huge pile of ashes that was still smoking. It smoked for several more days.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. This is going to hurt for a while. Of course, you’ll never get there. Of course if anything would have made a good photo until you see the photo. But I am pretty Of course.

What is this Jay Maisel quote? “Never say you’ll go back.”SHOOT NOW!” I could have taken a picture of it the first time I saw it if I had the camera in the car. And I had at least a week to go back. If only I had remembered.

If I make an educated guess about a possible photo opportunity and go hunting, I can’t really complain if nothing happens. But when the universe gives me a gift and I don’t have the wit and courage to just grab what’s offered to me, it’s my fault. Damn. There are now two great one-of-a-kind photos I could have gotten since I bought the new camera that I missed.

Mike

PS I would say that you have to live and learn, but to say that, you have to learn.

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