Milky Way

Went for star trails. Liked Milky Way better. The bottom shot is one hour of 30 second shots merged together. The first shot is just one of the 30 second shots. Thirty seconds is a little long as you can easily see that the stars are small arcs. There was a plane or two that flew by during the hour. Oh, and yes, the Milky Way shot has had the crap processed out of it. There.

Heron of the month club.

Nuffsed.

Cavers

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).

A fungus among us.

Well, a not great day at the park. Busted my leg up a bit - ouch. But I did get some mushrooms on the bank of the Wet Prong Buffalo creek. And I didn't die - always a plus.

Well, I liked the fog.

Taken and posted lots of photos from here. Saw the fog, decided to stop, decided to take a photo,  decided to make it black and white, decided to post it. End of story.

A hike through the creek - Wet Prong Buffalo.

It was an off and on (mostly off) rainy day (my favorite time to shoot), but I managed to stay mostly dry (except my feet and legs). Made for a few nice foggy shots.

Noticed a pair of, I think abandoned, turkey eggs on top of a rock, and saw butterflies. Probably put up too many shots, but took a boat load. I think the last one is probably best.

All in all, a good day. Going to go all the way down the creek one of these days. Maybe covered about one fourth of the creek or less, lots more to explore.

From the mouth of Big Spring Cave.

The turkey eggs are on top of the big rock just left of center.

A pair of turkey eggs.

Was happy with the fog for a few shots.

Hemlocks! Interesting, didn't see that coming.

Well, here you go, more interesting patterns.

Just an interesting pattern.

Another timelapse.

Still playing around with timelapse video. This is from the state park at Nolin Lake. Mildly interesting, like the last one (mildly interesting). Throwing in a sixty second long exposure that is nothing to write home about.