Frontenac Winter Moonscapes

I am on a quest for two photos with the Starry Night Tent: one with it in the foreground with Orion overhead, and another with the Milky Way core overhead. The second will have to wait until summer, but the former is a winter target! Unfortunately on this trip the moon phase was not going to cooperate with the direction the campsite faced and Orion’s position in the sky. The moon was just washing the stars out.

I decided to make my lemons to make some moonscape lemonade. I haven’t tried moonscapes before, and with a waxing gibbous moon throwing so much light that there were crisp shadows in the snow, I figured it was a good opportunity to play around! I tried a few different shots:

The first was an unlit shot of the tent. No external light sources, just the moon.

Next I played with lighting the tent with my headlamp. I wasn’t sure whether lighting it from outside or inside would be better, so I tried both. I found that using the headlamp to provide light was throwing weird shadows in the snow in the foreground that I didn’t like the look of. I tried just putting the headlamp bare inside the tent, but found that caused a big blown out spot, so put the headlamp inside my off-white sleeping bag stuff sack which helped diffuse the light.

The final shot was taken from the other direction. I wish the foreground was a bit cleaner, but its hard to have everything! This shot was done with my headlamp inside the tent and stuff sack like the above one.