More Nightime Adventures

Last night we took some friends home after a nice evening at another friend's art show opening in Ithaca's ABC Cafe. Our friends live in Dryden, a small nearby community and as usual we took the back roads through the fields. It was a lovely night and the moon was almost full illuminating the snowy landscape beautifully! On the way I noticed a small creek and I saw the reflection of the moon in the water as we passed over the bridge. When we returned we stopped by that bridge and I quickly took a photograph. I still had the highest ISO setting on my camera so I was hoping that something registered enough for me to be able to coax it out.

Well, I was able to make the scenery appear, albeit much too grainy for my taste. So I had a bright idea! I had been reading about HDR images and I really liked that effect, but since I don't have the full Photoshop software (only Photoshop Elements) I am not able to do HDR. But it gave me an idea - why not take a picture in the daytime and then combine them using photoshop's clone tool set at a low percentage!

Here is the daytime photo I took today:

It was such a gorgeous day, the sun was shining and making the snow melt everywhere. Most of the creeks around here were still frozen a few days ago! I really like the way this photo looks, the water is clear and you can see the rocks in the bottom, but the snow is still covering the banks.

Back at home I got right to work and you can see the result above! This is what I saw as we passed that creek last night, including the stars which I took the liberty to add - my eyes saw them even if my camera did not!