no moon - new series

finally turned off my alarm this morning @ 5:56 am...

it would have been 15 minutes past by the time i got up to the park and got the camera ready...

so i stayed in bed.. beating myself up...

not sure what to do... just to take the 4 shots i have and call it a day... carry on having messed the order up...?

i suspect my getting out of bed at 5:15 are over for now...

irritating but better for my sleep...

and i was reminded today of the great song by shelby lynne: black light blue...

and learnt how to play/sing it and started a new series today, youtube based: other people's tunes...

so black light blue is now uploading as no. 1 in that series...

and me, dinah & spski watched double indemnity this afternoon on film4 and it was great...

x

too bright moon

a perfectly clear sky this morning with the moon blazing away, a little too bright to be honest... but beautiful none-the-less...

it's such a wierd and beautiful thing to be doing...

pre-dawn... great time...

tomorrow i've got my year-long dawn project 2 & a half hours after the moon shoot so for the first time i'm going to stay awake directly after the moon shoot...

tempted to stay where i've been filming the moon, turn the camera the other way and video the sunrise... without the direct sun... i bought another couple of miniDV tapes today so i have the space...

but how long after 6 will the sun rise?

6:30 according to voyager... the software Wfloopy(shaman) put me onto for mapping out where celestial bodies will be at any time...

so 30 more minutes in that cold?

maybe it's time to break out the flask...

ok, anyway, i'm off to check out the marks in the concrete for the dawn project, set up the shot with this different camera & tripod that i'm using, then i hope me & dinah are going to see inland empire on an orange wednesday in a little while..

x

moonless

i was cycling up to where i shoot from @ around ten to 6 and i looked behind me to check the moon was there and it was hanging in the sky, partly covered in cloud, looking beautiful...

as i set up the camera the moon quite quickly got swallowed up by the cloud that was in fact covering most of the western sky...

so i shot my video @ 6 with no moon to look at...

so that's not particularly hopeful... it had been an amazingly clear night before the first morning of filming and the sky was empty... it didn't take much cloud cover to knock out the moon this morning...

but we'll see... i'll do it at least until thursday when i'll be doing the dawn project several hours later... if i don't get another moon tomorrow or thursday then it's not worth doing...

that first shot from yesterday... slowly zooming out, with the sounds of the birds and the occasional train... and the moon, red and full in the middle...

that's what it's about...

x

1st morning done

i didn't see the sun rise, but i saw the full moon set, red against the lightening sky, in fact it faded before it hit the horizon...

i settled for a weird, almost industrial place for the filming, in finsbury park, close to where the disused meets the park...

i cycled out of the house @ 5 and checked out a few possible spots but i'd been to the park earlier on and i'd noticed that this particular place had a good west view... back then i didn't know i wanted to look west... so i didn't waste much time looking elsewhere and in fact i knew where i wanted to shoot from @ 5:15am, 45 minutes early...

so i went and got myself a kitkat and a lucezade in the absence of a hot baigle, the happening baigle bakery not being 24 hours as i thought it was... shame...

the dawn project has that cafe right by it and i could so use a cafe right by the moon project, but it's not to be, not at that time in the morning anyway... maybe the flask that dinah got me for christmas...?

i'm tempted to also film the moon rising tonight, but i'm not up for filming every moonrise in this 2 week period, not with getting up for the 6 am shot as well, the moon rises @ 7:50pm tonight, 2:50am in a week, 6:30am the week after... the moon sure does have crazy hours when looked at from our sun based time...

so maybe i'll do the next couple of nights moonrise but certainly not the 2 week thing...

this morning in bed, getting the few hours i was getting, dinah woke really disturbed and needed calming, this 6am shot is going to be weird enough, filming moonrises is a job for a single person...

full moon

and lo, it became clear to me that this 2 week film project should be about the moon...

because it's easter...

a 2 week break from teaching centred on easter sunday, which is always on the 1st sunday after the 1st full moon after the spring equinox...

so i realised today that this means in the week before easter there will always be a full moon...

and so close to the equinox (well, a week or so) with the moon being full that means the moon & the sun are pretty much at opposite ends of the planet right now, so when the sun rises the moon sets and vice versa... the equinox giving us a fairly close night / day ratio...

so i'm staying awake until 6 when i'll be out there somewhere filming the moon pretty close to the horizon, then @ 6 every morning for 2 weeks,

the moon will be moving quite alot in that space of time...

from almost due west this morning to almost due east in 2 weeks...

a challenge catch it...

then i'll get a few hours sleep, getting up when dinah does around 10, my body will hate me for that after this 1st shock it should be fairly easy setting up the rising @ 5:15 am routine that i'll be doing every day...

then two weeks of that and i'll be set that way...

i still love my improvisation from thursday... i'll be glad of my shuffle out there on the streets when this tea is drunk...

x