[markseibold (Mark Seibold)]

Hi Jen

Welcome to the forum!

Yes many of us have started here too, just to concur with you. I appreciate (and sympathize) with your fine efforts. I am glad to see that you displayed these. You will be surprised what you can learn from starting here.

I actually started to display award winning photos from an old world film camera (35mm) in an online site locally at my astronomy club site here in Portland Oregon where they were discovered for commercial use eventually by a music recording company in London. But I never used a telescope. They were time exposures of large areas of the night sky, that ironically cannot be easily done with the new digitals without stacking images in segments (as you may know you cannot take a long time exposure in a single frame with the new digitals as noise builds up.) It requires much work in the computer later to enhance the images.

Although seeing the lunar 'details' first hand with the eye through the eyepiece frustrated me when the digital (also a consumer grade 5.1 mgpxl Sony Cybershot that I use now) would not show them well even when I carefully mounted the camera on a tripod over the eyepiece for maximum stability. So I then turned to hand sketching as i did earlier since childhood (Please see my recent post here- 'Lunar Sketches') as there is something else that takes place that as 'photographers only' do not see. That is the artistic process of 'seeing much more while you sketch'. I know this sounds old school or old-world but it is actually true!

While you sketch your eyes will develop a method through the creative process of art melded with the scientific methods of observation to actually see much more detail than those who only simply look and photograph; then the process of putting it down on paper becomes another story. It can seem at first to be a frustrating process, as many people will easily say "I cannot draw". This is actually false statement. What they might mean to say is that the patience it may take compared to the wanting of immediate images at the push of a button and not to labor for them can seem difficult and laborious at first.

But alas! With a little practice, the result with some repeated effort can produce a masterpiece of art that is worthy of a gallery or museum wall. It will contain something no photograph from the camera can. The artist's personal brushstrokes and signature hand imprinted to it. (Where photographs after awhile may all look like they came from the same camera and rather un-personal.) With more intense work, some of these sketches can fool some people. I get comments about some of mine that they are mistaken for photographs. It is true that the live eye observing can actually see more at times than a photograph can capture. But the art may take even much more effort than the camera. I guarantee that this will eventually pay off.

Although it is not for everyone, many accidentally discover sketching after many years of photography. You should see the comments as these discussions surmount at the forums in the states. Things like, "I never knew what I was missing in observing for years until I put the camera down and started sketching".

Sorry If I rambled a little here, but I would like others to know that I am not trying to convert them away from photography. There are many who go onto award winning time exposure photography of deep sky objects that approach the Hubble Space Telescope images. You have probably seen some of these amateur images in NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

I would like to possibly see others discover what sketching can do for their seeing and ultimate enjoyment while observing. I still use my 5.1 Sony for reference photos, sometimes only hand held over the eyepiece to take several close-ups of the terminator and the whole moon to refer to later while sketching to get the placement of surface features but then after getting the details in several technical sketches, I float them around the whole moon image and finally do an imaginary landscape at the bottom of the entire 22"X 30" black pastel paper. www.markseibold.com will also link to my gallery the Cloudy Nights Astronomy Forums in the states.

There are many award winning night sky photographs, star trails, comet Hale Bopp, total solar eclipses, etc, aside from the pastel sketches >
http://www.cloudynights.com/photopost/showgallery.php?ppuser=37924&cat=50 0
(*7 gallery pages here - the detailed lunar sketches are scattered between the middle pages, also containing film photographs, maybe one digital of comet McNaught.)

Good luck in your future efforts with the camera. You will see improvement as you experiment. Your first images are quite well done considering only hand-held and considering the camera you are using. What I found challenging was mounting the camera on a simple tripod, as any tripod will do, to steady it, try to move up in magnification, although this gets quite testy with an old 10" Dobsonian and without tracking no less. You will find the image moving and must keep shutter speeds at least above 1/30th sec while you constantly realign the telescope and move the tripod also but you can get amazing results sometimes with careful focusing and steady atmosphere.


Mark Seibold, Artist-Astronomer, Portland Oregon