Moonrise, over Floodwater with broken up Boardwalk

In yesterday's Rustling Reeds Blip, I mentioned how the Boardwalk, that ran alongside the River Avon, north of Salisbury, had been damaged by the floods. Here, they have 'stored' the parts, a good few hundred yards from the river which actually runs just this side of those far trees....

I made a mental note that this location had potential and so stalked back out at night, in Wellington boots, which allowed to me wade out and set up the tripod on the wooden slats.

As I had walked up, I was cursing how dark it was and where was the moon?? Then, I saw a massive half-moon from behind the trees. As I set up here, it was emerging from a small bank of cloud. It took me a while - and getting ever more adventurous, before I found the best location, with both a reflection of the moon and the ends of the boardwalks visible in the water. I could move up and down, but not side to side...!

Though it doesn't look like a fisheye shot, it actually is. I cropped a bit from the left and as the lens was looking up slightly, the horizon curved upwards. In Photoshop's CS, I corrected this, affecting the image area as little as possible.

The very foreground was very dark and required tons of shadow extraction, whilst the sky had a fair bit of extra contrast, to beef up the clouds and to make the stars stand out better. The redness is from the ambient street lamp glow from the city.

The 2+ minute exposure created some movement in the cloud and stars. Look at these in LARGE

Lens is Nikkor D 16mm f2.8 fisheye.

It was a beautiful, if frosty night to be out. Watching the occasional cloud scud across the moon, the stars en mass and all reflected so clearly was absolutely magical. I used up a whole battery's worth of shots. I also got more straightforward shots of 30 secs with my old 17-35mm f2.8 Nikkor lens. It definitely wasn't a case of 'that's my blip, I'm outta here!'. Frozen toes and thirst got me going home, after about an hour.

The local constabulary were being "nosey", as I walked back. One is tempted to say, 'well I'm being an obstinate bas***d, so sc*** you' - but they were friendly enough, though I'm not sure how being in rubber wellington boots (great for sprinting from the scene of crime), a camera on the shoulder and a tripod bag would mark me out as the Heist master, out to rob Waitrose... Next time, I'm going to Tippex "swag" on the tripod bag, wear a hoodie instead of a geeky fur-trapper hat and carry a proper shooter on my shoulder...