Exposure Madness

A few days ago, I was driving back from college and saw this beautiful evening lit up sky. It was a full moon and the way clouds were lit was just unbelievable. I saw it being lit like that a few times before, but never had the opportunity to take some pictures. But this day I was comming back home from college at around 7 pm and as soon as I got home, I grabbed my camera and drove a mile or two from my house to an open field where I took some pictures. This is one of them...

It was pretty dark...you almost couldn't see anything on the ground. Just the clouds were lit up from above. It was a beautiful sight.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 390 sec (390)
- Aperture: f/18
- Focal length: 45mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Flash Not Fired
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 22.01.2008

Why the Exposure Madness title? Take a look at the exposure time. It's 390 seconds. That's 6 and a half minutes. In order to do that I set my camera on Manual mode, set the exposure time on "Bulb", set the aperture to f/18 and ISO to 100. I would then put the camera on a sturdy tripod because of a strong wind that was blowing. I also put the tripod and camera behind my car where the wind wasn't that strong. I used the Canon RS-60E3 Remote Switch to remotely trigger and hold the shutter. I held it for 390 seconds and then let go. That's it.

The original picture came out darker than the post-processed one that you can see above. But because I shot it in RAW I was able to play with brightness settings. Also some contrast and color correction were done. Plus a vignette.