Afterglow

I have important business tonight, so I must stay awake and alert.  After a busy Monday of mopping, dusting, and polishing furniture, I set up my camera during the blue hour to capture the moment and share my experience with you.

The only cluster of lights in Sleepy Hollow is across the pond from the Mall, not exactly Broadway, but it’s all I’ve got! 

For my second shot, some “light trails," which I attempted on the railway bridge. When a vehicle finally spotted me, it thought I was a traffic officer with a speed camera! The hoots and finger gestures made me laugh, reminding me how unpredictable and amusing night photography can be.

Night photography is not something I’m au fait with, although I bought “Star Photography: The Ultimate Star Shooting E-guide” by Basie Van Zyl.  That’s all very well, but I must confess I’ve never read it!

Load shedding was fun during the first few weeks, a month or three ago; we romanticised it and thought about many fun things to do.  Now I can’t find the matches; the candles have burnt down to the ends of the wick, and my bathroom wall is covered in soot. So instead of a romantic bathroom scene, it just looks dirty, with a sooty patch on the tiles that has to be cleaned every other day.  In the Kalahari, I look adventurous with my pink headlight on; here I look ridiculous. Even the book club girls burst out laughing last week when I pulled it up over my neck, switched it on, and the light lit up the ceiling, and then I got glares when it blinded them!

My beloved has slinked off to bed with low blood pressure before my laptop’s battery failed.  That’s why I gave star photography a try.   After renewing my headlamp batteries and setting up my tripod, I headed out into the dark, feeling adventurous. Using the headlamp on the trees, I glimpsed the Milky Way, which felt like a minor victory in this mysterious world.

“Star photography is the mysterious world of creating art somewhere between science and maths,” Basie van Zyl. 

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