time to move on?

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After five attempts to compose something from this landscape during the full moon rise (minus one night for this particular exposure), it's getting to be similar enough that I need to search for something different. On the other hand, now that the weather has turned warm again, it's incredibly pleasant being out in a nearby location at the intersection of moonrise and sunset, whether one or the other is obscured by clouds or not.

The bugs make their presence well known at that time of day, particularly in tall grass. But it's nothing to compare with the midges of Scotland that we encountered almost exactly four years ago, or the black flies last summer when we were in Grand Isle, MI. Photographers' preferred times of dawn and dusk also happen to be when midges and black flies swarm the most. Travelers to the beauties of the Highlands need to know about this nasty fact of Scottish life. In Michigan's Upper Peninsula the black flies swarmed badly enough to make large format photography (aka slow photography) exceedingly unpleasant along the shore of Lake Superior. In both locations, keep moving and the swarms are not usually unbearable. Set up a camera on a tripod for several minutes, and the hoards descend, bringing temporary insanity. Fortunately here in Central Virginia, the instances are far smaller, hardly approaching swarm status. But without some protection one is bound to return with mosquito bites.

Despite the blood sucking element to the environment, I'm likely to return repeatedly to this location.