Moonrise over Joshua Tree, December © 2001 Tse-Sung Wu
Kodak TCN400, orange filter, 35mm ASPH, M6TTL, f8 or so.

All right. Enough armchair photographing and lurking already! I've finally made a small step into the digital world. Ritz Photo photoCD, resized on Photoshop, and slight adjustment in brightness and contrast, all on a Powerbook G4.

Comments welcome! ;-)

-- Tse-Sung (tsesung@yahoo.com), January 05, 2002

Answers

In case the link's not working (I have a bad feeling about line breaking carriage returns here, sigh), here's another link:

www.geocities.com/tsesung/photo/index.html

-- Tse-Sung (tsesung@yahoo.com), January 05, 2002.

Hmmm... The sun is behind you, so even with a filter it would surprise me if this IS flare. Unless you were shading the lens with something that actually reflected light back into the lens.

I assume you checked the negative? If it's not on the neg, it could be a Ritz Photo scanning artifact. If it IS onthe film, it could be a light leak (either camera or processing machine). Or it could be a chemical processing mark.

Or it could just be the weirdest flare we've ever seen.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), January 05, 2002.

Oh. And a very nicely done photograph, BTW.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), January 05, 2002.

I'd guess it's not flare. Look for either a light leak at the camera's back or bottom, or it could be the film was handled poorly at some point before processing.

Test for a light leak by duplicating the light conditions as much as possible, i.e., angle of sun, exposure of the camera's back to the sun, and see if it happens again. If it is a light leak the leak may have occurred any time the film was at the film gate, not nessesarily at the time of this exposure.

-- Douglas Herr (telyt@earthlink.net), January 05, 2002.

Doesn't look like flare, as Andy says. Nice picture. What's the big alien thing in the foreground?

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), January 05, 2002.

no. definitely not flare.

-- Dexter Legaspi (dalegaspi@hotmail.com), January 05, 2002.

Looks like a rocket contrail - probably out of Vandenburg -- happens all the time in the desert...

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), January 05, 2002.

yes, it looks like some kind of cloud, it is a big coincidence that the density of the clouds and this strange light is quite the same

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), January 05, 2002.

Really cool photo, Tse-Sung! I went there a few years ago. What an eerie place, huh?

I checked your HTML in the post and it is perfect. I don't know why your photo doesn't appear on its own at the top. Maybe it's because it's Geocities? I think tripod.com is the same way. I don't think that window wrapping will affect the HTML as long as you don't enter a hard return.

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@mail.com), January 05, 2002.

Rob: The big "alien thing" is the JOSHUA TREE from the title - desert plant local to the deserts along the California/Arizona/Mexico border. A whole slew of them in the JOSHUA TREE national monument in CA.

The picture appears in this thread once you have visited the URL in the second post (??).

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), January 05, 2002.

Yes Andy, just a teensy joke.

I wish we had trees like that in Europe.

Tse-Sung, the image is pretty muddy to my eye, maybe you could just drag the highlight slider down a bit in PS to pop up the big rocks in the background? One reason I find BW unsatisfactory is the heavy grey of skies - the sky _must_ be blue! My eyes feel starved by BW.

A very nice picture nonetheless, although I think I would have emphasised the tree's extraordinary structure by being a good deal closer in to it. But then it would have been a different snap.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), January 05, 2002.

I've seen this exact kind of problem on cameras with leaky bellows such as the late lamented Fuji 645 folders, one of which I used to own. But usually even those problems (with pinholes in the bellows) manifested themselves when shooting *into* the sun, not with the sun at your back.

Nonetheless, I'll vote with those who say "light leak" somewhere.

-- Rolfe Tessem (rolfe@ldp.com), January 05, 2002.

I lived in the southwest (Nevada) for a few years, and never really saw any contrails or other effects that looked so ruler-edged geometrical. So I'd have to guess this is some kind of a stray light problem. I don't think it was in the sky when the picture was taken.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), January 05, 2002.

nrrrf! Sorry, Rob.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), January 06, 2002.

Many thanks for the comments and critiques! I now believe the problem was due to not having a lens cap handy when I was re-advancing through this roll, having stopped mid-roll earlier. I recall trying to told my sleeve over the lens, and I can imagine a bit of light came in. Since the lens was in shadow, as others have pointed out, I doubt there was flare. And I wish there had been vertical contrails around, but I recall none, and none of my other photos taken of the same area that afternoon showed any.

Yes, it's an eery, quiet place, full of these amazing trees. They tend to be of the same height, and spaced evenly, as if all part of a great orchard planted by Dr. Seuss!

I agree it does feel a bit cluttery- I think my obsession with the moon kept me from thinking of the overall composition.

Moonrise over Joshua Tree, Too, December ©2001 Tse-Sung Wu
Fujifilm Superia 400, 90mm Elmarit, around f5.6 (the print looks better)

I think I had moon on the brain that day. Hoooowwwwwllllll!!!!

PS- can anyone point me to some basic web publishing guidelines? These don't have the same oomph as the prints I hold in my hands.

-- Tse-Sung (tsesung@yahoo.com), January 06, 2002.