Flashback Friday: Canterbury Moon at Dusk

My life twenty-four years ago today found me on one of my first journeys to New Zealand. I had finished conducting the day’s business in the vicinity of Greymouth, on the northwest coast of the South Island, and I was traveling toward Christchurch on the east coast to prepare for the next day’s work. I had just come through the Southern Alps via Arthur’s Pass and was descending toward the city through the plains of Canterbury and was watching the glorious full moon rising ahead of me through a line of Lombardy poplars, frequently used as windbreaks between tilled fields. I clearly remember seeing  one tree that was slightly shorter than its neighbors and, hastily attaching my camera to my tripod, sprinting across the dark field to get into the right position by the time it would be high enough to reach the notch. I had about a minute and a half to set up, and I remember making about a half-dozen exposures before it had risen too high, and this was—and still is—my favorite of the series. I had Scotchchrome 1000 loaded into my Pentax SF-1N, which accounts for the very prominent grain, a feature that endeared me to that film for several years, a conscious trade-off for its inability to capture sharp details.