... and the fiery glow orbited the great globe...

As the heat wave continues and the good weather abounds I'm forced to head out once more. So far I've been, on average, staying up ill 3-5am to make sure I make the most of these good, starry nights these past ten days and the weather forecasts still look good. I would go out every night if I could but I need to be able to operate during the day too.

Anyway, this pleasant night myself and Shaun returned to Durlston Country Park to shoot the Great Globe in proper dark, not necessarily intending it to be a truly late night.

Based on my previous visit I was quite excited to have a proper run a this location, so here's the first batch of shots.

Then of-course it was time to crack out the lights.
Shaun brought with him some ludicrously powerful, coloured, ring, LED lights that he pulled of some nice ambient lighting with. Several where we shone one colour on the upper-half of the globe and a second on the lower half.

Next up Shaun had the nice idea of orbiting the globe with some of the lights... so I did.

Happy with this batch of shots and yawning at the late night, we decided to head on home to ensure we weren't too exhausted for work the nex day.

On the walk back however we couldn't help but have a stab at shooting the castle itself.
 I didn't process these for a while after as I thought they hadn't come out well when reviewing on the camera but once I got them back on the computer I was very happy with them. Makes me believe there is more potential for other moderately well-lit locations.

Supermoon and the Great Globe

Scouting a new location today with a bit of new equipment.
It's early in the evening with a full moon, (The Supermoon no less) so no real intention to get star photos but a genuine hope to find good spots for future shoots.

Now Durlston Head is part of a country park at the tip of the Purbecks tucked just behind Swanage. The key spots I wanted to see at Durlston head were:

1. Durlston Castle (I was not optimistic i'd get a good angle tbh)
2. The Great Globe (A large globe statue positioned below the castle)
3. Anvil Point Lighthouse
4. Tilly Whim caves (Again, I was not optimistic I could do much with them)

So a location with lots of potential. I did the trip with my brother, sister and her dog.

First up I had a stab at shooting the moon. (I'm still not terribly good at it and I was hoping to get a nice angle so as to frame a person silhouetted against it.

I cheated to get this. I moved the moon in post-processing.

Notice however how big the moon is, that's how big the supermoon is in reality through a 85mm lens(100% crop).

A lot of photos like the one used to head this article: link. Showed up during the supermoon event showing the moon being way, way more than the 14% bigger that it actually was, all of them were fakes.

Beautiful fakes but frustrating ones. It implies that things exist that can't and gives the impression that photographs are possible that aren't.

This is the supermoon through my longest zoom lens(200mm)

This is Fella, my sisters dog.

The Great Globe.

This stone monument is a great subject matter for future star-shoots. The fencing is a bit inconvenient but we'll see what I can do.

I will be back for this.