Moonlit Garden

I think that is amazing given the lighting circumstances. How did you arrive at 45 mins ?

With night photography and long exposures you just get a feel for how long the exposures should be based on trial and error. In fact I probably would have gotten a printable neg if the exposure was any where between 30 minutes and 1 hour. As a general rule for subjects under bright moonlight I will bracket a few exposures starting with 5 minutes and move up to 30-45 minutes. Under these conditions when using slow speed film a difference of 10 minutes is hardly even noticable when looking at the negative.

John I love this concept and the thought of photography 24/7 using natural light is fantastic. I wish I had the patience of you guys.

john,
it works but i just don't get it. some photographs can only be made at night but certainly not this one. why not just shoot on an overcast day? you can shoot with a much smaller aperature for a considerably shorter time and get a sharper result(not to mention being able to meter and place your tones more accurately) with lots of time left over to make more photogaphs. doc

It is a very nice picture and I am quite impressed by the clarity of this night shot, and by your skills. But if you didn't say it's a night shot it wouldn't be obvious from the photo itself. I would personally prefer the picture to be darker, with recognizable moonlight atmosphere. I don't know how to do it technically, though, so my comment is purely theoretical .

Nice composition here but I agree with Docsfoto and Kate.Usually night images have something in them(street lamps,night sky,etc)that indicated it was done at night.Other than that I like the image,nice symmetry but why not do it during the day as was suggested?

Thank you all for your comments. In retrospect, I probably should not have mentioned that this photo was done at night. Yes, I could have done this during the day....and have. The prints look very, very different. Part of the challange of the darkroom for me is to be able to manipulate the print to achieve the results I want. I find it very rewarding to make night exposures look like they were shot in daylight and vice versa. It seems from the feedback that it is not aparent that this exposure was done at night....in which case I have succeeded. Thank you again for your comments. They are appreciated.

It's a great photograph, no matter what time of day it was made. If the exposure were 45 seconds or 45 days, it would still be powerful. I think it's perfectly composed.