It was dark long before I got to Forest Park today. I spent the better part of the day running errands and constructing a 5 x 10 foot rolling platform to serve as a floor in our studio sets. I deconstructed (with a great deal of help from my good friend A.G. Shaw) a wooden packing crate from Sri Lanka and used the boards for the floor of the platform, making the frame of the unit of 2x4’s and setting it all on locking casters. That took more time than anticipated, and the studio was busy with photographers for the entire afternoon.
So what is there to find in the park after dark, besides all the things that the anxiety-ridden fear? Stars was what I was after, even though the city lights make that rather difficult. I did manage to sight the Big Dipper and Orion, but without a map and with so little visibility, other identification was quite difficult.
I did some experimenting with the ISO setting on my camera, which, as some of you already know, adjusts the sensor gain, i.e., amplifies the signal from the sensor to the analog/digital converter. Since the sensor is not getting more information to work with (as it would if we increased the exposure by making it longer or using a larger aperture), we are trying to get a stronger result out of what data it does have. The problem with this, though, is that the information becomes harder to separate from the noise that is inherent in this world. Sounds like a universal problem, does it not?
The Big Dipper over Forest Park.