I'm Starting to Dislike Weather Forecasts

After the last time up at Passwang with the disappointing cloud coverage, I planned to give it another go with the next new moon.

There was a new moon last Friday and Friday is a good night for me to go out. The weather forecast was looking great several days before and even on Friday morning, it was still fine. It was not until I was about halfway to where I wanted to be. It was then that the clouds started to gather. By the time I was at Belchenflue, the sky was blanketed with clouds.

As the sun sets early this time of year, I left early to try and catch some of the sunset light. The forecast had predicted that the clouds would dissipate around 2100h, so I was still full of hope when I started to walk up to Belchenflue (my first planned destination for the evening).

The walk up to this location is through a forest, so the view of the sky is limited, but on getting to the top it looked quite good.

In the next two images, the stars can be seen well and there is only a light scattering of clouds. I like this look in nightscape images, I think that some compositions work very well with a few clouds. But there is a fine line between the right amount of clouds and too many, especially with a longer exposure.

These were taken from the same place and they were taken around the same time. Although I have edited them differently, there is a strong difference in colour in the RAW files and I have tried to emphasise this with the editing.

Both were taken with the Samyang 14mm/f2.8 and I'm still not happy with the quality at the edges, so I'll be taking a look at the Zeiss 18mm/f2.8 this weekend.

I waited around at Belchenflue for a couple of hours waiting for the situation to improve. Surprisingly the clouds were still there after 2100h.

I had a friend along with me this time so the time went by very fast. It's interesting how a conversation can turn while in an unusual situation. Stood on top of a hill in the dark waiting for clouds to part, isn't usual to have a chat.

We gave up waiting at Belchenflue and decided to head back to the car and drive over to Passwang. As you can see from the last image, the clouds decided to stay and after some time near Vogelberg, we decided to head home.

This was taken looking towards Basel, the bright spot in the centre of this image is the airport.

Overall I'm not that happy with these images, but as I want to use this site as a learning process for myself I need to post the good and the not so good.

Although the weather wasn't at all as expected, it was still worth going up for the experience and more importantly, the conversation.