Tag: moonscapes

Mirrors and Moonscapes – A Fun Return to Elephant Rocks

astrophotography, landscape, WGNSS Field Trips

The WGNSS Nature Photography Group, led by the man with the great ideas, Casey Galvin, headed to Elephant Rocks State Park in Iron County, MO, for the group’s February field trip. Our primary target for the evening was to utilize the full moon to light our scene after sundown – images often referred to as “moonscapes.” This was my first real attempt at taking moonscapes; usually I am focused on low to no-moon nights in order to focus on stars and deep sky objects.

Reflections on Quarry Lake
ISO-50, f/11, 3.2 sec. exposure, 140 mm focal length

We arrived in time to have a walk around prior to sunset and the park’s official closing time. In order to be in the park after 5:00 pm, special permission must be made ahead of time. During our stroll, we made our way to the backside of the quarry lake – somewhere I had not been in many years. This turned out to be a serendipitous experience. There we encountered some very nice golden light and excellent reflections coming from the lake’s surface. Unfortunately, the winds were just strong enough to create some obnoxious ripples on the water, ruining the mirror effect I was going for. No worries, however; I added a CPL and a pretty strong neutral density filter (in order to increase shutter speed) to my mid-telephoto lens and the ripples magically disappeared.

Several abstract-like faces appeared in tight-compositions with the rock wall mirrored off the lake’s surface
ISO-100, f/9, 2.5 sec. exposure, 84 mm focal length
I find capturing enough saturation in lighter colors a challenge with digital cameras. I am finally learning how to recover this in post-processing. The pretty light helped showcase the pink granites that the St. Francois Mountains are known for.
ISO-50, f/11, 5 sec. exposure, 118 mm focal length
This one was too good to pass up the opportunity to make the face more obvious by orienting it vertically.
ISO-100, f/9, 4 sec. exposure, 73 mm focal length

Shortly before sunset, we headed to the other side of the park to hang out with the rocks that give the park its famous identity. The remaining images were all taken after the sun had set and were exposed using only the light of the February full “snow moon.”

Moon rising over Elephant Rocks
ISO-640, f/5.6, 10 sec. exposure, 20 mm focal length
Somewhat surprisingly, care had to be taken when shooting with the full moon at our backs as the shadows were very noticeable!
ISO-3200, f/4, 6 sec. exposure, 20 mm focal length
Newer cameras shooting at longer exposures can pick up more stars than can be seen by the naked eye. I was happy to see the Pleiades and the Andromeda Galaxy in several of my moonscape images.
ISO-320, f/4, 6 sec. exposure, 19 mm focal length
Can you spot the Pleiades star cluster in this moonscape?
ISO-640, f/4.5, 8 sec. exposure, 15 mm focal length

This was certainly a special trip spent with friends. Temperatures and sky conditions were near perfect for photographing moonscapes. I was a bit surprised we did not have more WGNSS members take advantage of this special access. I won’t complain about that too much as I think having too many photographers would have made things more challenging with fighting shadows and finding access to good compositions.

Clear skies!