Big Bend Pt. 2 – The Stars

My husband did some experimenting with photography while we were in Big Bend and got some interesting captures one night of the stars. I just think these are such neat photos, I decided they were worthy of a whole post.

First is a picture at dusk from behind our tent.

Next is a picture when it was completely dark from behind our tent.

Then a thirty minute or so exposure. Isn’t it interesting how far the stars travel in such a short period of time, I mean how much the earth rotates? Even leaving the shutter open for 5 minutes showed movement in the stars.

Then the grand finale picture. This picture comes with a story. My husband set the camera up right outside our tent for all of these photos. This one he started just as we crawled into our sleeping bags. I was quite concerned about his leaving his camera outside. I mean, what if a javelina came and bumped it over, or what if the neighbors snuck over and took it as loot. Needless to say, I slept light, ever so often I would open my eyes and see the little LED on the back of the camera and know it was there and go back to sleep. Well, sometime in the middle I opened my eyes and there was no LED. My fears had come true, or so I thought. I sat up and woke up Nathan and whispered with more than a little urgency, “Something has happened to your camera.” He sleepily stuck his head out the tent and shut the shutter. The battery had died. He as able to just get the shutter closed and the camera was dead. We couldn’t look at his picture until he recharged his battery. All in all, stress included, it was worth it – it made for a very neat picture. My husband wants to go back to Big Bend just so he can practice more night photography. Stars in the Pacific Northwest avoid us too much to be able to take pictures like this.

So there you have our star photography and our star photography experience too.

There is a reason why there was a such a delay between this post and the last: I have something I really want to share from Big Bend, but it’s lost, so how can I ever take a picture of it. It is my son’s nature journal. He did some really nice entries. But I’ll have to just share that whenever it appears. I’ll go ahead and share the rest of the photos we got though over the next couple or so posts. I’m rather distraught over losing it though. He’s been adding things to it for three years and it shows some beautiful growth in artistic ability.