Firth of the Forth – Jacques le Roux photography

Beginning of August there was a blue moon and I thought I might as well try and capture it. I planned a walk down the Forth to take a few photos at sunset of the Forth bridges.

I walked a good distance and came to a point I could see Crammond island and it’s WW2 submarine defenses in the near distance. While I was taking the photos of the ship moored I looked around to see a huge moon rising. Almost totally missed as I expected it to rise 2 hours later. The size of the moon as it rises is by far the best due to the atmosphere and the way light plays tricks on our eyes.

To be honest the moon photos are nothing to write home about but it did give me a glimpse into the possibility of better photos in the future. As long as I plan it better of course.

I found 2 indispensable website for sunrise/moonrise photos.
http://suncalc.net = sunrises and sunsets
http://www.timeanddate.com = moon rise and moon phases

Here’s some of the photos I took as I was walking up and down the Forth.

I visited North Queensferry for a last attempt to get a nice moon lit photo. I think this one made it worth while.

Photographs by Jacques …

Night photosession at the Forth road and train bridges.

We haven’t been out for a while for a night photo session. After days of snow, rain and cloudy weather it was time to get out and get some photos done.

I used my Canon 1D Mark III with my new Canon 24-105 mm F4 L IS lens for this session. I think need to invest in a wide angle lens for photos like these in the future. At 24mm I didn’t get the whole of either bridges in the photos. Time to do some homework to see the best wide angle lens to use. I started at F22 to see how hard I can push it last night and settled on F10 with either 30 seconds, 15 seconds or 10 second exposure.

The wind plays such a big role in night photography. The photos looks great on the camera but once you get it on a large computer screen you can see what the wind has done to your ‘near perfect’ focus. Editing the photos afterwards gives you another level to change things if you aren’t 100% happy with the results.

It was great fun and I think I prefer night photography over day time. So much to do at night to force you to try new things to get the best out of the light and subjects. The best part of all is you can take almost anything that would be boring in daytime and transform it at night, having a famous and brilliant subjects like these on my doorstep is a extra bonus.

Forth bridges:

Probably the photo of the evening for me.