A few days ago 3 other intrepid women photographers and I ventured forth to a new destination, Big Sable Lighthouse, at Ludington State Park.
The four of us plus puppy Wally walked out to the beach as the sun set.
We were, of course, looking for a dark place to shoot the Milky Way. We are all members of an online Milky Way photography class, though most of us had never met in person.
It was a beautiful pink and gold and navy evening.
We put this particular adventure together quickly, with a barrage of text messages flying between us, when we realized there was a clear night coming up. Then, the day before, someone did some research and messaged the group — “Do you know there’s a 2 mile walk out to the lighthouse?”
We’re headed up there.
Uhhhh, no, no we did not know that. This caused a bigger flurry of messaging and then someone finally just booked a campsite for us all at the park and we decided to go for it.
We had a beautiful night for our adventure, and the walk was shorter from the campground than from the lighthouse parking lot, only 1.5 miles through the woods and dunes. And of course 1.5 miles back in the dark, but underneath a star packed sky.
It’s a grand building, big enough to house 3 keeper’s families, back in the day.
Our biggest obstacle turned out not to be the getting there but the lights that surround the lighthouse. There is a big streetlight shining in front, and an obnoxiously orange light in back making the whole back of the lighthouse and most of the grounds glow neon.
Our first glimpse of the challenges that would be presented.
According to our apps the Milky Way, now pretty vertical, would be right alongside the tower about 10 p.m. We were convinced it would be a stunning shot.
Taken with my cell as we waited for dark skies.
If it weren’t for the orange light…and that big tree.
It became obvious to us as we waited that we weren’t going to get that dream image.
So we did the best we could with the lighthouse itself and then we spread out across the beach looking for other interesting things.
The Milky Way was up there, but faded out by all the light.
There was a gentle breeze sweeping away the bugs and the stars were hanging above us and no one was in any kind of hurry to leave.
Even down closer to the lakeshore the light was overpowering.
When we finally did begin to pack up around midnight I noticed my backpack was pretty wet from condensation. I began to realize the trouble I had had focusing on the stars, or anything for that matter, might have been because I had condensation on my lens.
I walked way out into the dunes and shot out over Lake Michigan. That’s a fishing boat down near the bottom left.
Condensation which would have been eliminated if I had put my lens heater on the camera at the start. The lens heater I bought the week before and lugged 1.5 miles out to the beach, but left in my backpack.
Sometimes you just have to go right up to your target.
Yep. One more lesson in a whole list of lessons I’ve learned on this Milky Way journey.
Another lesson – when you’re focused in one direction don’t forget to turn and look the other way once in awhile.
As a side note, there’s been quite a bit of death tangent to my life this past week. Not people directly tied to me, exactly, but people important to people important to me. I guess the heavens gained a few more stars.
A few more stars twinkle this week.
Late that night while listening to the lake murmur and wandering the dunes, watching the Milky Way slide across the sky I noted the newcomers.
And then we all walked back to camp under the umbrella of the starry night, content in our imperfect images, happy that we went, ready to do it again the next clear, moonless night.
It all started yesterday early afternoon when I noticed a lot of chatter on Facebook about potential aurora borealis that night.
I ended up just past the sign up on that dune.
Apparently the indicator numbers were good, and if it weren’t for that pesky 3/4 moon coming up early in the evening there would almost certainly be a spectacular show.
Love golden light, but not when I’m trying to capture the northern lights!
So many times I’ve seen notices of potential northern lights and so many times I’ve decided it wasn’t worth the 4+ hour drive over to the western side of Michigan on the off chance there might be a show.
So many times I’ve kicked myself when I see images posted the next day of what I might have seen if I’d gone.
It was a lovely sunset regardless of how the night played out.
So this time I decided to just take the chance. I left home at 5 p.m. and was at a dark sky park at Port Crescent in the thumb of Michigan, along Saginaw Bay, by 7:30.
Of course there’s no guarantee that the lights will show up. Or when they might show up. What was guaranteed was the arrival of the moon, about 9:30 which would wash any borealis out.
At last the sun gave up and sank, leaving those last bits of daylight reaching up into the sky for a few minutes more.
As you can tell, I sat on the beach and watched the sun set, and then I went back to the car, changed camera lenses, got the camera all ready to go with manual settings and attached to a tripod and snuggled down with a pillow and a blanket to wait for full dark.
Lots of people on the beach waiting for the next light show to begin.
I was pretty antsy and never did take a nap. I was worried that I’d be sleeping in my car on one side of the dunes while the light was dancing out over the bay on the other side!
The view outside my car window, is that faint green I see?
So as soon as it was close to dark I was out of the car and heading for the dunes. There were plenty of other people already out there, so I found a spot between photographers and decided to practice my Milky Way star focus skills while I waited. After all the moon wasn’t up yet, and I could see the Milky Way right there…even though I wasn’t thrilled with the composition, it was better than sitting around doing nothing.
No northern lights, so I might as well practice my Milky Way skills.
And in the middle of my second shot, with me and my camera facing south I heard the woman just down the path from me begin to squeal. I couldn’t turn my camera around fast enough, and when I did this is what I saw.
Be still my heart.
Well, not exactly saw, because to the naked eye it was just this moving mass of grey out over the black lake. But the camera saw it for what it was, stunning pink and green light.
I never saw the people on the beach below me until I looked at the imamges on my computer.
The woman next to me told her family, “See?! Aren’t you glad I dragged you out here for this!” I didn’t hear the kids’ answers, but I’m pretty sure everyone out there last night was glad they were there.
The light began to shoot up into the sky.
I kept clicking as fast as I could, trying different fstops, and shutter speeds. At one point I must have accidently touched the focus ring because I have a whole lot of images that are totally out of focus.
I’m not going to show you those. Just know it happens to all of us.
I like the people included in the image, it shows the perspective and sheer size of the dancing lights.
Luckily I knew enough to check the focus on occasion, so I was able to salvage the rest. Mostly.
After about 20 minutes over my right shoulder I noticed different light. It was the most beautiful, huge, orange 3/4 moon, creeping up through the limbs of a tree.
Uh oh. An interloper is coming to spoil the party. Notice the woman on the hill with her camera and tripod?
I wished I had my other lens on the camera (but it was back at the car). I wished I had two cameras going. But there was no time, so I kept focusing on those lights out over the water, knowing they’d soon be fading.
One of my favorite images from the night. Someone said I’d captured the one-eyed aliens, and I have to agree it looks like I have!
The moon crept higher and higher, and the lights began to fade. People began to leave, shining their flashlights in my face and into my frame as they climbed the dune to head back to the parking lot. I was loathe to go, the warm summer night and soft breeze off of the lake complimented the extraordinary sight of the lights dancing and shooting pillars up higher and higher in the sky.
A night I’m never going to forget.
I didn’t leave until the color faded away, and then I reluctantly put the lens cap back on and started down the dune toward the car.
Lots of people were still walking out over the dunes, headed to the beach. Every group stopped me, a person obviously carrying a fancy camera and a tripod, to ask if I’d seen anything.
I couldn’t begin to describe what I’d just experienced. I just told them all it had been wonderful but had faded now.
The soft faded color was a gentler version of what I had just witnessed.
I encouraged them all to go out to the beach anyway and stand under the stars to admire the beautiful moon. Most of them did.
As for me? I’m so glad I took a leap of faith and went north to see the lights. I’m so glad I didn’t nap the evening away in my car. I’m so glad the lights decided to cooperate and dance for those 20 or 30 minutes before the moon encroached on our party.
The big dipper is more obvious once the main show is over.
And I’m forever grateful to my Milky Way teacher for instilling in me the confidence to stand by myself (along with 20 or 30 other photographers, all strangers, but all united in one goal) out under the stars and appreciate what I see overhead.
I haven’t stopped smiling since I heard that first squeal and turned to watch the magic explode above us.
That darn moon. Still beautiful even less than full.
Lessons learned: Don’t think about things too much, just go. Bring bug spray. Long pants and sturdy shoes are a must. Check your focus regularly. Don’t forget to stop and internalize the experience, it’s not all about the pictures. Encourage everyone else to stand out under the stars at least once.
And now I’m encouraging you. If you get the chance…just go.
Everybody has seen a moon image somewhere on social media today. Or maybe you saw the moon yourself last night, so many of us stood out under the sky as the full moon rose.
I thought about going to a darker location with a clear view of the horizon, but I couldn’t make myself go scout for a place like that before dark fell. So last night, about 9:30, I stood in my front yard and watched the moon rise above the neighbor’s trees.
It was sweet.
I didn’t even mind if I got the shot. It was just nice to be out under the stars watching the moon and thinking about all the people all over the country who were out there doing the same thing.
Night sky photography is a kind of community, even if you never meet any of the others you feel good knowing they’re out there looking at the same sky, no matter where they, and you, are.
After the bagpipe parade my sister and I began to prepare for a night trek through the cedar forest and along the sandy beach out to the end of Sunset Point. The wind was picking up and we were worried that waves we heard crashing somewhere out in the lake would be washing over the point.
At 11 p.m. we decided to head out there and check it out for ourselves. There was a certain amount of anxiety as we wound our way through the woods and along the beach, but we were relieved to find there were no waves anywhere near the point and we were able to set up on a picnic table out on the point with a perfect view of both the Milky Way to the southwest and the Big Dipper to the north.
I lightened these somewhat for Facebook, but you’ll still want to look at them in a dark room if you can, and on a larger screen.
My first composition included more of the water in the bay. The light on shore is someone with a flashlight, probably also out looking at the meteor shower.
She sat in a chair and watched the northern sky, exclaiming in excitment every time she saw a meteor streak across the sky. I focused on the Milky Way, deciding to include some of the bay in my first set of images, and then moving slightly to the left to include all the trees in the next series of shots.
I like this composition too, with more of the trees we walked through to get out to the point included.
But she was seeing so many streaking meteors that I decided to turn my camera around and see what happened. I liked the rocky point jutting out into the dark lake.
I was lucky enough to get the meteor in the shot – barely.
And then I asked her to go sit on a rock at the edge of the gravel, still many yards away from the water, and sit very still for 20 seconds while I took a shot of her watching the sky.
The green might be air glow, or it might be northern lights. There was some pink in the sky too.
I love this shot so much. The image looks peaceful, but in actuality the wind and wave noise was so loud I had to signal when the shot was finished by flashing a light at her.
Then we realized I could set up the camera and she could push the remote shutter release while I sat on the rock watching the sky.
Such a perfect place to star gaze.
This was sooooo cool, to sit out at the end of a rocky peninsula and look at the stars. In this image I think there are 3 meteors, though at the time I didn’t see any of them.
My sister had been watching part of the Milky Way which was directly overhead and she asked if I’d take a picture of that, so I pointed the camera straight up and pressed the shutter release.
Uh oh, clouds have invaded.
But when we looked at what we had we realized the clouds had suddenly moved in. Our night of shooting stars was over. Our window of opportunity had been less than 2 hours. I was very glad we went out there a bit earlier than we had planned. I was happy with what we had captured and we hoofed it back down the point, across the beach and through the woods to our waiting car.
Back in camp, snug in my tent, I scrolled through my images on the back of my camera. I couldn’t see much detail in the small screen, but I knew it was there. I was smiling so big it was hard to go to sleep.
During our exploration walk out to the point earlier in the day.
I don’t know if I would have gone out that night, given the roar of the lake and the gusty wind, if my sister hadn’t been with me. Thanks to her we had a magical couple of hours, and now you get to share in it too!
Time is marching on, faster and faster, and if I don’t write this post now I will begin to forget all the fun stuff we did on our four night camping trip in Ontario Canada, on the shores of beautiful Lake Huron.
The beach in downtown Kincardine. It reminded me of the beach on a Caribbean island.
We were able to stay two nights at Point Farms Provincial Park, but they were booked for the weekend, so we planned on packing up Friday morning and moving to our next reserved campsite at MacGregor Provincial Park about an hour north, beyond the town of Kincardine, where the bagpipe parade would happen on Saturday evening.
The beach at Point Farms, early in the morning.
Very early Friday morning the sound of the lake roaring woke us. We hadn’t heard the lake from our site during any part of our two day stay, but Friday morning it was obvious something was going on.
Both of us popped out of our tents and said, “Is that the lake??” Then we scurried down the long set of stairs to the beach to see what there was to see.
Good morning!
The sun was just getting high enough in the sky to start illuminating the water and there were pretty little puffy clouds turning pink along the horizon.
Pretty big piece of driftwood.
We spent a long time wandering the beach and taking pictures. Good thing we had until 3 to vacate our site!
Early morning light on gull wings.
Eventually we went back up to the campsite and began to pack.
Didn’t count the steps, best not to know how many.
Normally it takes about an hour to get everything stowed in the car. It takes longer than that if everything is kind of wet, which it was.
Time to move on.
But we only had to go about an hour north, so no worries. Plus there were lots and lots of pretty barns between where we were and where we were going to be.
On the way out of Point Farms.
I guess I’ll show you those in a separate post, there were so many!
Well, OK, here’s one of the pretty barns we saw that day.
Finally we arrived at Kincardine, but we were too early to check into MacGregor Provincial Park and our site. So we explored the town’s beach, watching beautiful sailboats and clouds move at the horizon…
A steady wind caused both the boat and the clouds to move right along.
…and a very large boat come into the marina….
The boat’s name was 2nd Seabatical, and it was from Houston.
….and of course we saw the town’s lighthouse.
The photogenic lighthouse next to the marina.
Kincardine is another pretty town, and we enjoyed walking on the beach…
This post’s artsy-fartsy image.
…and eating a quick lunch sitting on a bench along the boardwalk watching people and their dogs.
We talked to this doggy grandma about her dogs and the town of Kincardine.
Eventually we made our way to McGregor Provincial Park.
This is a giant bat house near the ranger office. They said no bats lived in it, they chose to live somewhere else. Silly bats.
This park had sites tucked in among the trees and brush, so there was quite a bit of privacy, though noise from other sites certainly carried over to us.
Setting up at our very nice site, which was surrounded by poison ivy.
We explored the park; the beach that didn’t allow dogs…
It was nice to sit in the sand.
….and the beach allowing dogs. The dog beach was definitely the better choice.
That’s sunset point out there.
And then we walked out to the end of sunset point, to consider whether that might be a prime stargazing location. It seemed promising.
Friday afternoon out on Sunset Point. There would be no stars that night.
But we were really there to see the bagpipe parade, the parade that had sparked this entire trip. So… did we find the parade? Well of course we did! Even better, as we walked into the park where the bagpipers were congregating, we met Quinton, a beautiful little sheltie boy and his owner.
Quinton showing off his tricks and getting a treat, of course.
We had a great conversation with Quinton’s dad, learning some of the history of Kincardine, what the winters were like (not as snowy as they used to be), why the parade route was altered (Queen street was being dug up to replace ancient pipes underneath), our mutual love of shelties (he had 2 before Quinton, one died of kidney failure at age 7), and where to stand to get the best view of the parade.
A very good boy.
Then we went to listen to the bagpipes warm up, talked to one of the pipers and headed over to the parade route, smiling in anticipation.
Warming up.
The sun was setting over Lake Huron as the pipers began to march and play.
Waiting for the start of the parade.
It was pretty magical, though odd, as they marched down the street for a block, then did a complicated turn and marched back up the block again, then turned and marched part of the way down again.
Making the turn around.
I hope when Queen Street is opened again they might be able to march further in one direction. I imagine they hope so too.
They do this every Saturday evening all summer!
After the ‘parade’ the musicians moved to the center of the park, formed a big circle and played for the several hundred members of the appreciative audience that had settled on chairs and picnic tables.
It felt like the whole town turned out.
Kids played in the grass, neighbors caught up on their personal news, extended families gathered, people nodded and tapped their toes to the music. It was a beautiful evening of community togetherness.
Even the lighthouse showed up to give high fives!
My sister and I were both smiling as we made our way back down to the beach where we had parked. Mission accomplished, we’d seen the bagpipe parade, the event that spurred this entire trip.
One of many beautiful buildings on our walk back to the car.
But….would there finally be stars on this, Saturday night, our last night in Canada?
Terri over at Second Wind Leisure Perspectives has challenged us to post about all things yellow. This works out perfectly for me because I’m just home from four days spent camping in Canada, where one thing became very obvious — some time in the last century building beautiful homes out of yellow brick was a thing.
We were driving up highway 21 through small towns along the eastern coast of Lake Huron and every town had a lot of yellow brick houses. They were all beautiful, big or small.
Some were out in the country.
Many were along shady streets in town.
The town of Kincardine had so many of these beauties along one street that we just had to park and walk a few blocks admiring the houses and their gardens.
I’ve traveled in Canada a few times and have always noticed how beautiful their gardens are. On this street almost every house had flowers in full bloom from the front porch to the street.
I’ve got lots to show you from our four day camping/bagpiping/starry night trip, but I still have lots of images to sort through.
Bur I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to show you yellow from a Canadian point of view. I hope you enjoyed seeing these beautiful homes.
If you ever get a chance to drive up the eastern shore of Lake Huron you’ll find the same thing we did; friendly, happy people, cute little towns and stunning landscapes.
Hey, hey hey! It’s me, Penny, your adventure girl!
Want to go on a walk with me?
Well, I haven’t had many adventures lately but I’ve sure been having fun! Mom took me to the park last week and I wasn’t as afraid as the other time.
I didn’t even notice this snake when we walked by it. Mom kinda screamed though. Mom is a wimp.
Mom is noticing I am happiest when I’m out in the open where I can see the sky and not so happy when we’re in the woods where it’s dark and there are strange sounds.
I think I can handle this, mom!
But this is the second time we’ve been to this park and I liked it a whole lot better this time. I ran up and down the hills and explored lots more and mom says she was very happy with my ‘progress,’ whatever that means.
I even stopped to take a peaceful little breather on a big hill.
Then over the weekend my friend Lance and his sister Payton came to visit me! They brought their folks too and we all sat out on my deck.
Lance and I discussing our photo/treat ratio requirements.
I guess if I was honest there wasn’t a whole lot of sitting for me and Lance. We mostly chased each other around the deck. We had sooooo much fun! I’m as big as he is now and I can play just as hard!
We raced around and around that deck!
I tried to play with Payton (she’s my angel sister Katie’s half sister) but she told me off, so I went back to jump on Lance. The folks had to make us stop and rest cause we were all about the game.
Payton wasn’t in the mood.
I had so much fun with them that I had to sleep for an entire day after they went home. I think Lance and Payton probably slept too. Mom calls that recharging. I wonder what she’s talking about?
Aren’t we all just adorable?
Anyway, I know you like to hear what’s going on in my world, so I thought I’d stop by and give you an update. My Aunt is here right now, and I’m pretty busy entertaining her.
What’s your favorite toy today Aunt B?
Play, play, play, a sheltie-girl’s got to keep the fun coming all the time. It’s such a big responsibility, but I’m up for the task!
I get lots of hugs cause I’m so cute.
Talk later, people, I have to go get a toy for my Aunt so she doesn’t get bored!
Oh, and thanks to Lance’s parents for driving so Lance and Payton could come and play! We had so much fun.
Change Is Hard 