Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
I had hoped perhaps to see some northern lights last night as the predictions were for a good show, but that didn’t pan out. The moon however was amazing when I went outside at 10, so I went back and grabbed my 150mm-600mm to try to get a few photos. I’m sure if I had put it on the tripod, it would be a bit sharper, but all in all, happy with the result.
The aurora forecast looked promising last night, so I decided to try and stay up and see if I could see anything. I am surprised with how great the photos turned out, as frankly it wasn’t as vibrant to my eye as it was to the camera. But, it wasn’t really dark yet either, at least at the start.
I didn’t know what it was until I saw it mentioned on some other people’s photos, but I captured a proton arc last night as well!
Most of the streaks through the photos are satellites, but there was one brilliant meteor that passed through as well. Unfortunately, it rained yesterday afternoon and the evening was quite damp, and I ended up with some condensation on my lens on the later photos, which put halos around the brightest of the stars.
All in all though, I am really, really pleased I stayed up! I hope you enjoy, have a great evening!
Here’s a quick time lapse I did of the sequence of photos I took. I think it does a nice job to show the beautiful movement in the sky.
A new visitor stopped by the yard this morning! I fired off quite a few shots from the porch, mostly so I could ID the bird, and then wandered closer. He or she didn’t mind my presence, and continued working up and down a couple of birch trees, picking off tiny insects. The red-breasted sapsuckers are a summertime visitor to my area, according to my bird app, so I am very grateful for the opportunity to view and photograph today.
I managed to get another evening in of night photography on the 11th (and then couldn’t manage to stay awake past 8:30 last night…) I let me camera do its thing and was curled up under a blanket with a glass of wine, and consequently lost track of how many meteors I actually saw… it was a lovely evening though and here are a few photos I thought I would share.
Have a great evening!
Yesterday, for the first time since I moved, I managed to stay awake to see the stars. I’m sure that sounds a bit funny, but summer nights are long in southern Canada, and even longer now that I have moved quite a bit further north. And this early bird does have trouble staying up past 10…
But, I managed last night and got my camera set up hoping to catch a bit of the meteor shower (I saw one, and captured a few faint trails before I called it a night). What I was most impressed with though was the clouds. The first shot in the photos I am posting was taken at 10:30, and the last at 10:59 (okay, I didn’t manage that far past 10). The moon wasn’t up yet, and I live far from from city lights. I didn’t do anything other than export the photos from lightroom, they were taken with auto white balance, and all at 30 seconds exposure, f3.5, ISO 1000 (with my focus set to infinity).
If you look really, really closely in the last two photos, you might see the faint evidence of a meteor.
I’m excited for playing around more with night photography. I must say, it was fun to get set up on on my back deck with a couple beers and watch the sky for awhile and take a few photos.
Have a great evening everyone. It’s pretty overcast here tonight so I’m going to give the late night shooting a miss – maybe tomorrow though 🙂
Here are my photo’s for the travel theme- grey.
I didn’t think I would be entering any photos for this challenge, as I couldn’t think of any subject to photograph. Then, a couple weekends ago, I signed up to go for a hike to Ancient Forest. We had a beautiful day for a hike in the forest, and lucky for me, a member of one of the local hiking groups accompanied the group I was with, to give a talk about the area.
Certainly if you are in the Prince George area it is a beautiful place to visit, and a very unique ecosystem in the region. Some of the cedars in the forest were in excess of 5 metres in diameter and over 2,000 years old.
I’ve been MIA from the blog for a few weeks now, and I am glad to finally have an opportunity to get back to posting. I made a move about two and a half weeks ago up to Prince George, and have been spending my time trying to get settled into my new life routine (and spending two full weeks without any internet!).
So far so good up here. I haven’t seen a moose yet, but did see a young grizzly bear on moving day (my camera was sadly not to hand) but what has been outstanding are the hummingbirds. We put up feeders in the front and back yard quickly, and drew quite a crowd. Now there are three feeders and at least one needs to be refilled every day, sometimes more than once a day. At one point we counted nine hovering around the front porch. I didn’t manage to get that in a photo (yet) but I did capture proof of five at one time.
Here are a few of the hummingbird photos I have captured so far. It’s also been my first chance t try out my new lens, the Tamron 150mm-600mm. The reach is amazing, but for this, I really didn’t need it; sometimes I can’t even hang the feeder back up before the hummers start eating again. They are very comfortable with me being close by. I am happy, happy, happy with my bird watching 🙂
Have a wonderful evening everyone!
Two weeks ago, I managed to get loads of editing done, and had a post a day. This past week, each day seemed to slip by at record speed, and I didn’t manage a single post (or even to take or edit a single photo).
Thankfully, this morning I grabbed my camera bag when we headed out for our early morning walk. What a beautiful morning it was! I picked a particular spot at the dikes, both so I could get a few photos of the sky before heading out, and also the hopes of seeing some interesting ducks that I had spotted the evening before. It turns out the ducks are common goldeneyes, and I didn’t manage any decent shots of them, but at least they were good enough to get an ID.
This was my favourite shot from the morning. Enjoy!
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Here in southern BC, we have spent the last few days with lovely warm weather for February, but have been absolutely hammered with rain as well. This morning, I woke up to a reprieve from the rain and even a few hints of blue sky. As such, I finally got out on a morning walk with my camera. I can’t believe it is February and these are the first 2015 photos I am able to post. They aren’t the best eagle or osprey photos I have taken and the birds weren’t doing anything weird or wonderful. I am just so thrilled that I was able to have a dry walk and see some birds that I decided to share.
Based on the quality and direction of the light, and how desaturated the photos were, I decided to convert everything to black and white.
Happy Sunday everyone!
