Since a young age the heavens have for me been source of awe and wonder, both fascinating and humbling.  Our closest astronomical neighbour of course is the Moon and is an ideal for first foray into astrophotography.

The Moon is a mere 250,000 miles away only 1/400th of the distance between the earth and the sun, through eyes of the camera though it can still appear very far away.
A zoom lens of 200mm or more can help you get better acquainted with it.

The most common mistake that I and everyone makes when taking first taking a picture of the Moon is to use the automatic settings.  The camera tries to adjust the length of the exposure and aperture for a night time shot.  Of course the moon is as bright as a day time object and ends up a blurry washout blob.
To get the picture you want set the camera to shutter priority and set the it to  about 1/200 of a second and press the shutter button.

If you are fortunate to have a very long lens you may find a tripod will help keep you pictures sharp.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39630965@N03/5041301266/" title="moon2 by Andrew Thwaites, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/5041301266_d2e22df891_m.jpg" width="240" height="104" alt="moon2"></a>

I look forward to seeing some of your photos,

take care

Andrew.

Any self-respecting bookshop will have a section devoted to photography, and upon those shelves you shall find books that belong to either  ‘how to do guides’  or portfolio books  based around a theme or photographer. 

 A new addition to that shelf is a book called ‘Photography in 100 words’.    This  book does not neatly fit into those categories, it instead seeks to distil the words that best describe the essence of photography and the process involved in their acquisition. 

 To this end the author David Clark enlists the help of 100 of the most accomplished photographers including David Bailey the English photography synonymous with portrait pictures of celebrates from the ‘60s, ‘70s & 80’s and of fashion photography.

Bailey describes the act of capturing an outstanding image as a ”happy accident” which I think is very apt statement , as it so often is a particpant in some of my better photos. I guess this similar to what the  father of modern photo journalism Henri  Cartier-Bresson  as saying when he described the essence of a good photograph as “the decisive moment”.

 What phrase would you use to best describes best the process of photography or word that the essence of a photograph?  If have an interest in photography and would like to meet up to take pictures or share ideas please contact me.

Next time I will share with you my exploits of lunar photography, until then happy shooting, take care, Andrew