The dark side of the moon.

In the spontaneity of a hot summer night, I came home after dorm shopping at Target, ran up to my bedroom, grabbed my camera, and bolted back outside for another attempt at photographing the moon. The experience could be summarized in four details: telescope lens, polarizing filter, manual focus, and mosquito bites. While the first three items make perfect sense, the fourth item is where the question marks start to appear. Why mosquito bites?

Here is the short story of my encounter with a particularly irritable mosquito. It was nearly dark. The view looked as if the world was covered in black dust floating in the air, making everything seem a bit unclear. My eye catches the only moving object in the still setting: a bug flapping it's wings rapidly. Impulsively, I kick it away but it persists in trying to land on my leg. I thought by moving away, it would not bother me any longer. However, in the midst of unbreakable focus, the sneaky bastard bites me in the thigh and ankle for a total of three bites. All in the course of 15 minutes. Was it worth the mosquito bites to be able to capture this precious gem in the sky? Yes!