Taking in the Moonlight

I love the mountains and being a long way away from civilization. So even though I was around a small town in July of 2005, it was just about as far from civilization I could get. I was standing outside a little school house in rural Salta, Argentina. There was a little electricity, but I think it amounted to powering 4 incandescent bulbs in the entire town, all of which resided in the tiny school house. So even though there was electricity, I don't remember there being an electric hum.

It was in this silence that I was looking out at the mountains with a full moon in the sky. Without a need for a flashlight, I walked around outside and took in a southern hemisphere sky, which contained stars I had never seen from my northern hemisphere home.

Staring at the sky, I set up my camera on a pocket-sized tripod. And after trying out a few different exposures and ISOs, I felt like I had the image I was looking for. After a few more moments of silence, I packed up my meager camera equipment and headed back inside to sleep on the tile, school floor. The image that follows is what came from my moonlight photography.

29 mm, f/4.0, 30 sec
The Argentine Night Sky, Salta, Argentina