Light the Night

Last night was the darkest day of the year. Not only was the night the longest, as it was the solstice, but it was also a new moon (or pretty close). The light in the sky should have been pretty close to nothing.

But of course....humans have to go and screw that up with light pollution. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Victor and I went to a solstice party last night, which lasted well into the night and a little into the morning. There was delicious cookies, live music, and most importantly Halo 4. Legendary really isn't that hard any more.....Victor and I almost spent more time killing each other than the enemy...or maybe those are the same thing?

I digress...After the party, we were walking to the car and I happened to look at the sky. It was cloudy and ugly earlier, so I assumed it still would be. But what do you know it had cleared up! The stars were shining bright, and the light pollution as lovely on the horizon. (NOPE. BAD LIGHT POLLUTION)

We rushed back home, and then proceeded to sit at the crossroads for a few minutes figuring out where to go. Victor thought it would be good to go down to the light house at the south end, and I was wondering about the north end. In the end, we decided to go south, which was a good choice.

We arrived, and after a short hike ended up at the light house. The tiny, rolling hills around it were amazing, so I had to incorporate them into a photo somehow. We did a little light painting and whatnot at that location, then moved on. Here's what we got from that.

The next spot was just on the other side of the light house, right up against the cliff. We were looking up at the light house, with the cliffs and the stars in the background. I'm going to do a video for this one, since there's a lot to go over and it's easier to talk than write it all.

Camera settings: 30s, f3.5 and ISO1600. I shot a very high ISO (at least higher than I normally do) just to see if it actually works for making the sky more exposed. It really helped, so I'm going to continue that trend.

Here's the final image. I love it, just bummed the milky way wasn't in it. I'll have to look into that a bit more, maybe this time of year it's not visible that time of night? Who knows...

Here's the last one of the day, a light painting on the rocks by the water. The water is painted with my Maglite, and there are two exposures of the sky to create the vertical panorama. Enjoy!

See you tomorrow!