Night out

Nah, not that kind of Night Out.

Instead I sat on the porch for a while after dark to watch the sky. I figured the clouds would obscure the stars and the Milky Way so I was content to sit for a bit in the warm night air and rock on the porch.

Charlie thought he'd go in after he listened to the Barred Owls hooting. 

I thought I'd spend a little time playing with light painting. I wanted to highlight the night sky and the trees in the woods to our west of the house.

My experiment with light painting with my headlamp. 

Then I walked to the driveway to look where the Milky Way should be appearing and took a 15 & 25 second shot.

I did this partially 'blind' in a way because with the naked eye and the clouds, I wasn't exactly sure of what I was getting. [I learned a little bit later to use the 'Boost' feature in the Bulb/LiveView Modes to sort of see what I was shooting at.]

I may have gotten some meteors? The upper arrow points to two downwards streaks.
The lower arrow points to where the Milky Way should be.

Then the clouds moved on!

and...then,

there it was! 

Looks like a meteor particle was zooming through also.

Bonus!

It is hard to see those little streaks of light, however if you click on the photo you should be able to see one little streak in the upper right quadrant of the shot.

I hadn't intended on looking for the Perseids, but perhaps I did find them!

They are supposed to be starting and getting stronger until mid August.

I think this may have been my first time 'catching' a meteor!

Once the clouds moved on, I took several shots of the MW and even tried one of those fun shots where I look up with a head lamp on. The shots really didn't turn out well. But here is one. 

I am standing in our driveway not far from the house looking up towards the ridge. My Subaru even glows in the headlamp glow.

There are so many things to learn about I night photos and adding light. The headlamp actually has a nicer beam to it when the humidity in the air is higher. LED lights turn up bluish.

I wonder if I had some glow sticks twirled them around? Wouldn't that be sort of fun and crazy? 

I am practicing at home so one day in the few weeks, I can try this near the ponds at KVR, or the old dam.

These night shots are not easy. Fortunately I have a feature called Starry AutoFocus which helps quite a bit. I use a 12mm lens. For my camera the ISO is at 1600 and I often use a feature called LiveView to find where I will shoot as the camera 'boosts' what you can see through it. 

I still can't quite get the hang of the right colors for the night sky. 

Clouds are orangish from the light in the towns or farms in the distance.

I like my star skies to be more bluish and cool toned.

The photos are generally pretty noisy, but as technology improves as well as a good Denoise app, it doesn't look so bad.

For this shot of the house, I pointed the camera northwest and gave it an 8 minute LiveComp. This feature takes an initial shot and then the camera adds any light as it changes for the next 8 minutes. 

That is Olympus's work around to standard star photos which have the photographer taken 100's of shots of the stars and then put them through another program which 'stacks' them together. 

I like this feature for so many things.

I tried several times to combine star trails with a bit of light painting to show the house and trees. Most of them were just bad... and a failure, but I think I did get one decent effort.

The middle pine tree is dead and reflected the bluish color of the LED headlamp.

Still, it was fun and I learned a bit more. 

I'd like to try this at one of the covered bridges at KVR.

That is a goal I'd like to complete this summer.

One last Milky Way shot in a 

cooler tone.

I like this one best as it makes me think of galaxies and star travel. 

There certainly is something to be said for watching the stars at night. I eventually went inside reluctantly because I knew I needed sleep.

It was a great night out!

Enjoy the Perseids if you can find a dark sky. The full moon this year will blot out the peak time for the meteor showers. 

I used:

Olympus E-M1 Mark III

12mm lens 
f 2.0

ISO 1600
Different exposures for different shots.

Tripod