'Twas a Dark and Stormy Night Fraught with Drama

It was a dark and stormy night. The moon, pock-marked and cheesy, begrudgingly shared the only light to be seen. This "Moon of Claiming" wasn't in any hurry to come out of hiding from behind the summer storm clouds and tall old pine trees.

On this particularly dark night, I found myself waiting for Dixie Doodle, my sleek and velvet-eared companion...a dame with plenty of attitude and four gams to get her what she wants. And right at that time, she wanted to take care of some biological business. I'm no idiot--I didn't stand in her way.

I leaned against the porch, wrapped in a tattered, fuzzy old blanket to ward off the dampness. I deeply inhaled the scent of heavy rain, wet forest and fresh ionized mountain air. In spite of losing sleep, I heard myself speak to the night air, something about life not being too bad.

While cocooned, gazing half-mindedly at the stubborn night orb, I realized I was wasting a photographic opportunity. Awkwardly I simultaneously drug, carried and tripped over the blanket, making my half-blind way back to the house. Bursting through the door, the soft glow of my LCD HDTV lit the way, allowing me to semi-quickly grab my camera. As I retraced my lumbering, fabric-laden steps to the porch, I hadn't accounted for the possibility that Dixie would follow...within moments there was a pile of tangled limbs, blanket, tripod parts... accompanied by yips, squeals and wimpering. And then I realized Dixie was still in the yard. If one humiliates oneself alone in the dark, is it still humiliation?

Eventually, I took 25 captures of the stormy sky and brilliantly shy lunar globe, all at different settings, mostly experimenting with manual settings on my Canon Powershot SX10. Due to unintended complications, not one exposure really produced a "good" image. But I was determined that this adventure was not going to pass silently into history. So I began a little post-processing in Photoshop.

I found I liked adding some texture to this image, as if it were a painting. The "fabric" texture depicts the evil blanket and the dark tone properly represents the inky, velvety darkness of the night. Do you agree? Disagree? Sorry I didn't get a picture of the blanket debacle?

(Click image to see it full view and really see the texture treatment.)