Chasing The Stars!

Ok, this post is over a couple days and I started years ago enjoying the process. One thing in photography I’ve enjoyed for a while is “astrophotography” or taking pictures of stars and whatnot, (long exposure photography). Well the Perseid Meteor Shower was this past week, I even requested the morning off to rest a bit afterwards but I saw the moon was really bright in the early morning hours so I did not go out as is my usual thing with the Perseids. I went out and tried some other type of long exposure photography (star trails) a few days later but I was not pleased with what I got as the sun was coming up and washed out the stars quite a bit but I did get a few with the sunrise but not the photo I was looking for.

Well I went out early Saturday morning to scout out a spot at Lake Monticello for another attempt. Of course I had to take a few photos while out there:

This log on the bank caught my eye, so I snapped a photo

*Take note of this tree, I’m coming back to it.*

*Not my best (it’s way out of focus and I’m in it)! Note: it was HOT!*

Well I went out Saturday night to attempt my star trail photo. When I got there it was cloudy to the west so I did not go to my planned spot at first but went to another and set up there with my pointed east.

Well after taking photos for about 30 minutes I noticed the clouds had cleared out so I moved to my original planned spot.

I stopped on the star trail a little earlier than planned (I was tired) and snapped this photo of the Big Dipper before packing up.

Remember the tree from above? It was in my line of sight so I lit it up with my flashlight for one of the exposures during the setup:

This was a fun setup! On my way out to the lake Saturday evening I spotted a very bright meteor that crossed over the road as I was driving. I can play the what if game and say that if it was a little later it would have been in my first setup. Or if I had left little earlier, maybe… But it’ll be a memory of mine for a while to come, the very bright “fireball” I saw on the way to take pictures!

It reminds me of the first fireball meteor I photographed years ago that was out of focus (in My Story)!

Wonder who this Michael is, you can see my story here: