Been awhile, eh?
Every couple of months I will venture out on a moonless night and photograph the stars. Just to do it. Maybe it’s a meteor shower, or a long exposure of a wild land fire. It’s a little more difficult theses days, well, because I like my sleep. With the geomagnetic storm that slammed in to Earth during the last day or so, the hype would have you believe that we NorCal folks might get a glimpse of the show. So I bit. Hook line and sinker.
A few things.
-It’s felt like spring/summer all winter-even at night- I took for granted it would be fairly pleasant while photographing around midnight. Well after the latest rain storm that passed (rain?) a pressure gradient set-up yesterday afternoon and continued in to the wee hours. So above Lake Sonoma, the wind was howling. It was cold. I haven’t worn a sweatshirt or a jacket since January and luckily I had both in my car.
-I forgot my flashlight. iPhone works, but the battery goes pretty quickly.
-It’s very dark when there is no moon. Just ask the gopher holes.
-We have a lot of light pollution in the area, which leads to a lot of weird colors, especially at 30 second exposures.
-A Deer can look like bigfoot at midnight.
-Javelina really are blind. Several passed 20 yards away and never attacked. That’s good. I didn’t have any wild pig repellent.
-Skaggs Springs Road above the lake is possibly the smoothest mountain road I’ve ever driven.
Whatever; I did make a couple of pretty pictures, but no Northern Lights.
Sigh.
-Kent Porter