Northern Night Sky...

Spent my birthday this year photographing the Milky Way over this trestle in northern Maine.

Another From The Archives...

I went through my archives the other day and found this image I took during February of 2016. There was a sodium vapor street lamp behind me which cast a very orange glow to the lighthouse, I tried to get rid of the orange in Photoshop but didn't have any luck so I decided to convert to black and white. I'm glad I did because I think this version looks pretty good. I used Silver Effects Pro to convert and it did a real nice job of bringing out the Milky Way. It shows up more in this version than the color. The one thing I remember about this shoot was how cold it was, 10 below zero Fahrenheit, it was the first time my camera battery went dead because of the temperature.

Birthday Photo....

A photo I took of the Milky Way on the evening of my birthday earlier this month.

Reid State Park Milky Way....

Here's an image from a while back taken at Reid State Park. It's a blend of two separate images. The sky taken at f2.8, 30 seconds and the foreground taken at f2.8 and an 8 minute exposure. The foreground and background were then blended in Photoshop.

Harpswell, ME.....

I recently photographed the lobsterman statue at Lands End, Harpswell. This time of year the Milky Way aligns with the city of Portland and the city lights wash out the galactic center. This is a single exposure of thirty seconds and I was lucky enough to catch two shooting stars in that time.

8 Months in the Planning...

Last August I visited Grand Falls and whenever I'm at a new location I check the Photographer's Ephemeris to see if there is any potential for astrophotography in that area. If you don't know, in a nutshell, the ephemeris lets you know where the sun will rise, the moon will set, etc. in the location you're in. Using the augmented reality feature and also setting the calendar for a future date, you can plan on future shoots. In August the app showed me the Milky Way would be right above the waterfall in late May of this year. For the past eight months I've been planning this trip, the only concern was would the weather cooperate? Well it did, there wasn't a cloud in the sky all weekend. In this image the galactic center of the Milky Way isn't directly above the waterfall but an hour later it was. I have photographs of it being there but by then I was light painting the waterfall but the artificially lit falls didn't look natural to me. I prefer this image even though the center is not directly over the waterfall. Here's a video I shot from that trip: Memorial Day Weekend camping trip.

Aurora...?

I went out last night attempting to photograph the northern lights and this is what I got. I couldn't see anything with the naked eye but the camera picked up those light colored swirls in the upper right. They could be clouds for all I know, but at least I got a shooting star in the center. Fort Kent in far northern Maine would've been the place to be to get some good images.

Tent by Fire Light.......

Here's another photo from the Seboomook camping trip. This didn't come out how I had envisioned because the next campsite over had a fire going so it lit up the whole area cancelling out the light from inside the tent. Not everything goes as planned.

Off Grid...

I just spent some time in northern Maine on the north edge of Moosehead Lake. I camped out of my van which I recently bought just for that purpose. I stayed in a place called Seboomook Wilderness Campground, it had some amenities but internet was not one of them and I must say I enjoyed it. Being that far north light pollution is almost non-existent so it's an ideal location for astrophotography. This photo was taken near the boat launch where the campgrounds canoes are stored.