insomnia and long exposures

Kiddo had a bad bought of insomnia last night - he went to bed at 8:00 but didn't fall asleep until after 11:00 (we had a snow day this morning.  You'd think he would have slept in, right?  Wrong).  While I waited for him to drift off, I blogged, watched the snow fall out the window, listened to the snowplows hard at work, and had fun playing with the camera.  I've never tried long exposures, so last night I rested the camera on the window sill, turned up the ISO and slowed the shutter speed waaaaay down.  The results were a little surprising.

This was taken at 11:00, or thereabouts.  The picture is nothing special - just the view out our front window - but can you believe how much light the camera found???  5 second exposure.  No headlights, no streetlights.  No full moon.  And what is surprising to me is that it picked up color - the blue shutters, red bricks on the porch, brown leaves clinging to the trees. Isn't that cool?!?!?!

Here's what it looked like this morning (blurry, because I switched to manual focus last night and forgot to switch back to auto - the auto wouldn't work in the dark.  Go figure).

Now I'm ready to try again - this is going to be fun!  I really need to get outside and shoot in the air instead of through dirty windows.  If only it were warmer out there...