And The Moon Was Not Mine to Capture

I was on the roof-balcony tonight, with the determination and naïve romanticism that I could capture the moon.

So I climbed the spiral stairs and unlocked the little gate, which creaked a whisper, and then waited for the moon to stroll out from the clouds. There wasn’t any wind, though occasionally you get a tease of one; the leaves would seem to rustle, and you’d wait, expectantly, but nothing ever comes.

Of course, you don’t capture the moon without the equipment for it, so I set up the tripod and the camera and the silver chain I bought from the Amcorp Mall flea market, which the seller told me (she was an old lady, who looked like she was from a foreign land, a mysterious land, and she wore a monocle and a hat of dead flowers) was made from the silver lining of clouds, to rope the moon in place.

And when the moon came out, I cast the silver chain, and then took the pictures. About 13 of them. But none of them caught the moon. They’d catch a glimmer of light in the night sky, but it’s never the moon. Never the shape. And the moon soon flitted back to the clouds, which devoured it. And I was left standing there, wondering if I hadn’t had the skills for it, or maybe hadn’t the right equipment. Or maybe the silver chain was a dud, and come to think of it, I think I saw the same lady selling bubble blowers at Petaling Street, only that she wasn’t wearing a monocle, and that she really looked like she was from Pudu.

And I thought I could try some night-time photography, but my inability to use the tripod properly caused me to over-screw a knob and it fell out and into oblivion, perhaps down the cracks of Neverwhere. So yeah; my first night with the tripod, and I’ve already broken something.

And because I have an impeccable sense of timing, the last batch of the Chinese New Year fireworks was released the moment I locked the little gate. One of them was really close, too. With the bunch of stuff in my hand, the most I could do is say Argh. And Damn It.

Turns out that I could’ve actually read a guide on capturing the moon. None of them said I needed a silver chain made out of the silver lining of clouds.

So here are the pictures of the Non-Moon, which I decided to mess around with using Lightroom’s presets. They turn into weird things.

This one, without presets

This one, with the Bram Stoker vibe

This one, which became some sort of cheap imitation of a NASA photograph of their desktop wallpaper.

And my mistake with the camera timer took this shot, which I tinkered around with, with Lightroom. I kind of like how it looks.

Because it kind of looks like a shot from Night of the Living Dead. 

I would try to capture the moon again tomorrow, because determination and naïve romanticism require a little more than a night’s disappointment to kill.