Tidbits and a Dilemma

Friday Morning Progress Report: on Wednesday night, I experienced my once/year thing and slept for 8 hours (or close enough). Last night, Thursday, I didn't sweat very much. At least I didn't have to change my shirt. Progress . . . I hope.

Yesterday: we did what we've hardly done all summer – got coffee and chicken sandwiches from Tims and sat in the park for awhile.

Yay Us!

More Discussion about Tuesday's Blue Supermoon Evening (you may want to roll your eyes and move on from the following minutia.)

First, I have two photos from the Golden Hours before the moon rose, which I didn't share them the other day because I had a number of moon photos to lay on you poor souls. 

We got to the location about 3/4 hours before scheduled moonrise although it was closer to a full hour before we could really see it due to cloud on the horizon. I wandered about a bit and took this ↓ photo.

This ↓ is how I set up the tripod and camera for moonrise, long before the predicted time. Amazingly, the Sun Seeker app had predicted the location accurately. You will see that my moon photo, farther below, will be from the same spot.

I stood there for a long time because the moon was obscured, so it didn't rise as low or as early as expected. A long time. Waiting for the proper conditions can be a thing with landscape photography. Sometimes, photographers (but not me) will set up but then wait for hours for the right light.

Now, we need to talk about the ethics of removing objects for the sake of the product. Some of you objected to the distracting light poles yonder by the highway in the previous post. I get it, but such practice presents a bit of a dilemma.

While I have happily removed passing cars from the distant highway in all of these photos, I did not remove the poles and lights in the lunar photos as I presented them previously. While passing cars didn't belong in the photo, the lights are permanent fixtures. Is it ethical to remove them? While photographers might remove tiny distractions, such as an obtrusive leaf or twig, for example, they will be more reluctant about other objects.

But in response to your opinions, I have since removed those poles and lights (below). It is true that the edited photo does look better without the distractions, but I am still not too sure whether it is the right thing to do.

If you will look at the above photo, you can see that I was standing in front of a concrete water outlet, but I composed the photo to avoid it. That is different than removing it.

Anyway, here is the edited photo with a reminder that with he help of the app, I had actually been able to visualize the composition in that morning, long before the actual photo shoot.

It definitely looks better with the distractions removed.