Serendipity

11/365
11:29am
I attempted to take some pictures of the full moon last night. I knew to use the tripod. I knew to set the ISO high. I knew to keep the shutter open for a long time. I even knew that using the timer would mean I would alleviate that fraction of second shake. Still, I was disappointed. I couldn't get a clear shot while keeping the shutter open for ten seconds because the clouds were moving too fast, and overall, it just didn't look that great. Whatever, I'm used to a lot of stuff not working out.

We went to Monona Terrace this morning to take advantage of their large, open, warm spaces to burn child-like energy and use two free tickets to the home show (again, the love/grrr...relationship I have with the house). I went out on the lower terrace and took about fifteen frames. I'm pretty much fascinated by the cracking ice plates on Lake Monona. They look like someone used a serrated knife from the inside of a giant Frozen Lake Cake and left ice crumbs around the edges.

I looked through the histograms on the way home, and immediately noticed that I had forgotten to change my ISO from last night's 800! Oh man! Once I loaded the pictures, however, the extremely visible high noise level in the shot actually worked! See, I also happen to find ice plates fairly ominous and well, a little eerie (and people walk on these! For the love of Pete!). The digital noise, with it's grainy, scary B-movie quality, should be throwing you a visual ba-dum, ba-dum that something dangerous could happen. Interestingly, I had this in color and it looked nearly the same as it does in B&W, but by converting it to B&W, I avoided some blotchiness that was occurring (again because of the high ISO). I think it gives it a 35mm high-speed film look, and now wish I would have taken the ISO to 1600. I'd like to say that this whole shot was intentional from start to finish, but truthfully it was just good, old-fashioned luck.