Hoping for a little Aurora again, nope. Shanty Hollow, with big dipper.

After a long absence (in the kayak), Shanty Hollow.

Squirrel!

Water, limb, leaf.

Shanty Hollow. Beaver.

Birds and mushrooms on Shanty Hollow Lake. Update: Double-crested Cormorants, maybe?

Not sure what these birds are. I assume some sort of duck. I saw one flying, and watched it land in a tree. Followed it, and there was another. After some googling, they may be Double-crested Cormorants. That would not have been my first guess.

Was hoping the heron would pull out a fish, but not this time.

The token overly-processed Shanty Hollow moon shot.

I wasn't a slug.

The persids, according to what I had read, were supposed to be pretty good this year. Now I think that really referred to the moon being out of the way.

Anyway, usually I am a slug and don't get out during the meteor showers. This time, I was still up and wide awake, and the sky was clear, so I headed out to Shanty Hollow Lake about midnight. Actually got there at 12:30am or so.

I stayed until 3am, as from what I had read, the shower would get better the closer it got to dawn. I actually saw more in the 1 am range than I did closer to 3 am. All together I saw 6 or 7 meteors, which I don't think is a lot considering I was there two and a half hours.

I did get a few meteors on camera, small streaks, but I did get a few.  So mission accomplished I suppose.

I had two cameras going continuously, shooting a 30 second exposure, then immediately firing off again. One camera fogged up eventually, the other didn't. Go figure.

For the star trails, I ran them through photoshop to merge the photos together. White balanced on the blue side. As is not unusual, I processed them pretty heavily.

Caught Polaris on a few of these, and it was nearby on the others - nice. The bottom line is, I'm glad I did make the trip.

So, here are mostly star trails with the occasional meteor thrown in. I need a much wider lens if I hope to get some good meteor shower shots.

70min or so

Meteor up top left.

Polaris is stationary, all other stars rotate around it.
Meteor mid left going off screen.
15 min exposure (30, 30s exposures).

Meteor up top, left. 15 min exposure (30, 30s exposures).

Well, here you go, more interesting patterns.

Another day, another bird.

Well, went back out on the restored canoe again tonight. Shot
another bird. Haven't identified it yet. It looks a lot like sandpipers I found on google. If it is a sandpiper, I don't know what flavor.

As a bonus, here is some type of mushroom, in a bed of moss, on a log, in the lake, from a canoe.

Herons, here we go again.

Undoubtedly, this will again become the 'all heron all the time' channel, so here we go again. Took a canoe I recently restored out to Shanty Hollow for a test paddle. Test paddle or no, of course I took cameras.

Bubbles!

Bought a new canoe. Trying it out at Shanty Hollow in the rain. Was trying to capture a bubble bursting. Did not get one, but I liked some of the bubbles anyway.

Now with more kayaks.

I've put up almost these exact scenes before. I thought the kayaks added something. As usual, you mileage may vary.