the moon
July 26, 2005
Two years ago, when I first arrived on the island, there was a run of beautiful full moons — low in the sky on a clear night, the various rocks and uninhabited islands dotted around my island become black silhouettes on a white sea. The sky is deep blue, and the Okinawan mainland is also a black shape along the horizon. Often the light from the moon is bright enough that the foreground of sugar cane fields is visible too. However, even though I bought my new SLR camera partly with a view to trying to photograph the moon, in the last year or so it’s never been quite as good as when I first arrived. Either it’s too cloudy, or the moon is in the wrong part of the sky. But by a stroke of luck my last full moon on the island turned out to be as good as the good old moons back when I arrived. Unfortunately I smashed my tripod in a fight with a giant spider a couple of months ago, so I didn’t have too much choice about where to take the photo from — this picture is a long exposure taken from the second floor of the school, where there was a ledge I could perch my camera on.
Posted by Alex — July 30, 2005 at 10:38 am
Wow! What an atmospheric picture! The clouds that cover only one thin plane in the horizon make the whole thing look like it was taken on another planet! Or like some really, really, bizarre explosion has taken place…
Anyway good luck in your last couple days on the island
Posted by lva — July 31, 2005 at 6:11 pm
It does look like the mushroom cloud of an atomic weapon, doesn’t it?
Thank you. 8 days and counting. I’ve managed to catch a bad cold in order to make my last week a bit more challenging. I also still don’t know how I’m going to be moving to the mainland yet…