Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

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Night #2

My sister and I spent our days exploring Michigan’s eastern UP the last week of August, but we spent our nights looking for clear skies. We were on a mission to capture the Milky Way over interesting stuff, in particular over the Upper Falls at Tahquamenon State Park.

A view of the falls from along the path, taken during our morning research for the night time adventure.

I’d seen images done by other photographers and I figured what the heck, how hard could it be. Right?

We’d made the recognizance trek back to the falls, and down the 94 steps to the viewing platform during the day. We’d check the position the Milky Way would likely be over the falls, using my hand dandy phone compass. We’d strategized how the whole even would go down, including talking to rangers ahead of time so they’d know where we were.

From the viewing platform.

Still, as we parked in the giant, but empty, parking lot after dark that second night of clear skies I was worried, as I always am, about what could go wrong. As we sat there waiting for it to be dark enough headlights came up the long driveway toward us.

“DARN!” I said (well maybe not that exact word).

These stairs are easier to maneuver in daylight.

I’m never happy to have other people around when we start out on a night mission, unless I know who they are. The truck went on past us and parked in front of the bathrooms. The park rangers were there to clean up the facility after the day of tourism.

Now I was in another quandary. I didn’t want to walk up on them and startle them. So we waited until they were done, and on their way out they stopped to talk to us, wanting to know what we were doing. The lady ranger recognized me from our earlier discussion and told us to have fun and be careful.

Yep lots of water falling off that ledge.

So with an official blessing my sister and I packed up our gear and began the long walk back to the falls. It’s not really that difficult, given what most people have to do to get to scenic places, the trail is paved and pretty level as long as you watch for the occasional tree root.

The path winds along the ridge above the falls, flat and wide.

Still, by then it was pitch black. Do you know that noises are scientifically louder when heard in a dark woods vs. in your own driveway? It’s a fact. Anyway, we made it back to the long set of stairs and picked our way very carefully down to the viewing platform.

The first thing I noticed once we were down there, other than that the roar was very loud, was how much mist was blowing off the falls. And that it was blowing right at us.

I had my sister turn on her flashlight so I could see how much mist was flying. Turns out it was a lot.

But there was the Milky Way, exactly where we figured it would be, right above the falls. To our eyes it looked great. I could imagine just how it was going to look through my camera lens.

Except for this darn railing that is just about the same height as the top height my tripod will go. And I need to shoot in portrait (vertical) to get the Milky Way and the falls in a single shot. Which put the railing smack dab in the middle of the frame.

Oh…and I forgot to turn off my red flashlight too.

How annoying. I dabbed at the mist on my lens and considered that maybe I could shoot from a lower perspective, between the rails.

I was struggling with the composition so much that I didn’t spend any time on focus.

The noise from the falls and the waves of mist washed over me as I reconfigured the tripod and tried sitting down to shoot.

Seriously this was not going well. Then I tried holding the camera on the top railing manually, even though I knew that was ridiculous and there’s no way I could hold it steady for 20 seconds. In what felt like a monsoon.

I really needed a taller, more steady tripod. In fact at one point the whole tripod tipped over and somehow, some way, I managed to grab a leg in the dark before the whole thing fell over.

And I need to be there on a clear night when there is less mist. I wonder if that’s even possible?

Maybe I should find a spot over the LOWER falls.

And mostly I need to learn how to do panoramas, because if I could have shot the top of the Milky Way in landscape (horizontal) slices, down to the falls I could have stitched it all together into one really pretty image.

Or so I’m told. I haven’t done those segments of my class yet. I guess this is the winter to buckle down and learn that stuff while the Milky Way is resting, so that when she wakes back up next spring I’ll be ready.

Eventually I had to focus on just the stars, and even then we were getting soggy from the mist.

So ladies and gentlemen, I present to you zero great images of the Milky Way over the Upper Falls at Tahquamenon State Park. But don’t be discouraged. I plan to try again after I do more learning and more research.

I guess the Milky Way over the Upper Falls just wasn’t in the stars for me that night. (You see what I did there?)

But we will be back, if nothing else because walking into the dark woods and then walking out a little damp but none the worse for wear was a thrill in itself!

You might find us just about anywhere!

I hope you all come along with us on our next adventure!


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When a 3 night reservation turns into two…continued

Let’s see. When I left you last my sister and I had driven a few hours north, scoped out a potential night sky photography site at a lighthouse, and set up our campsite at Harrisville State Park.

The view from our campsite.

The purpose of this three night camping adventure was to capture the Milky Way in darker skies than those around my house. I’d made the three night reservation six months ago in order to get a prime Lake Huron shoreline site.

I was sure that at least one night would have clear skies.

A view of the lighthouse from about where we planed to stand later that night.

Based on weather forecasts it looked like Monday night/Tuesday morning was my only chance. So we set our phone alarms to get us up at 2:00 a.m. and in the early morning darkness we drove the few miles to the lighthouse.

We quickly found the “X” we had drawn in the sand earlier in the day and began to set up shop. But while I was lengthening the tripod legs I noticed a light way out on the horizon, shining just above the bench I intended to use as a foreground. The light bothered me because it was so bright.

See that light in the middle of the horizon? It was a lot brighter than it looks here. The orange is light pollution.

I took a couple shots but didn’t like what I was seeing.

Too much light from towns to the south.

I decided to shorten the tripod legs in an attempt to hide the light behind the dune. I sent my sister over to the bench so I could try to focus on it, intending for it to be in the foreground which would be stitched together with another image with the focus being the stars.

She’s walking back using the red light. You can still see some of that bright light on the horizon to the right of her.

That didn’t work, I couldn’t focus on her at all, so I gave up that theory. Plus we were too far away from the bench and if I moved closer there would be that darn light out there on the horizon.

I decided to just try for a single image, nothing I had to stitch together later, just practicing getting the stars in focus. That worked and I took several of the same image so I’d have some spares to practice stacking when I got back home.

You can see the bench, but it’s really small and there’s too much light pollution.

But all the time I was focused on the Milky Way I’d been distracted by the lighthouse to my right. The grounds had a single large light on the other side of the building which was lighting up the side of the tower. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to get a shot of that even if it wasn’t a Milky Way image.

I started to move the camera around while not realizing the shutter was still open.

So once I was done with the multitude of stackable images of the Milky Way, and feeling disappointed in the images I had so far, I turned the camera toward the lighthouse. And the first test image I took I realized included a small part of the Milky Way!

How exciting, it was possible to get the Milky Way and the lighthouse in the same image! Quickly I shifted the camera to the right. And this is what I saw:

Nikon Z6ii, 20 mm, iso 3200, 12 seconds.

The yard light they had perfectly lit the tower without being obscene. I had enough time in between flashes of light to get the image because there was so much other light around. And by moving to the right I had eliminated most of the ugly orange light pollution that blasted out over the lake.

I was thrilled.

The rest of the night I worked on getting the best composition, and then taking multiple shots to stack later. I think I was also trying to get one image with the lighthouse in focus that I could use as a foreground to be blended with my best sky shot.

To be honest I don’t know if I did that. I haven’t looked closely at all the images yet. I fell in love with the single image I’m showing you now and sort of stopped looking after that.

It’s such a great reminder of the entire adventure.

If I don’t end up doing anything more with these I’ll still be happy. I need to read the study guides in my online class to learn how to do blends where part of the image is from one shot with the foreground in focus and the rest of the image is from a sky shot with the stars in focus. It can’t be that hard. Right?

Right???!

So what did we do the rest of our three nights at Harrisville? Well…this has gotten too long already so once again you’ll have to wait and see. But I don’t think anything we did the rest of our time there will top that first night.

Hint: There were no more clear skies, day OR night!

When I’m out shooting the stars I don’t feel the cold. My sister, who was patiently waiting for me was marching up and down the beach trying to thaw her toes. I didn’t notice the cold until we got back to the car, and then I realized I was cold to the core.

We got back to camp about 5 a.m. and headed to our tents to get one hour of sleep before the 6 a.m. sunrise which we wanted to photograph. But we were both so cold all we did was shiver in our tents, even with our electric blankets, as we waited for the sun to come up.

The first hint of sunrise.

And after we got a couple shots with the sun rising we scurried to McDonalds to get a hot cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich. It took a couple hours before we were ready to head back to our tents for a nap.

It was pretty but we were too cold to appreciate it.

Warm was good.

So Monday night/Tuesday morning was the highlight of our camping adventure. Would it be worth it to stick around Harrisville for the rest of our reservation? Hard to say. When I get some more time I’ll show you around town.

But it won’t be under the stars.


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Then there were stars

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!


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Foggy glow

It all started, as things often do, with an early morning appointment.

For years Katie-girl got me up extra early and while we were outside doing her business I’d usually witness beautiful but fleeting things. Geese or swans flying low with bellies glowing in the early light. Full moons dipping below the branches of our trees. A fox slipping silently through the woods. The flick of a deer’s white tail. Wisps of fog dancing on the pond.

But I haven’t been out in the early morning light lately.

Last week, once our 7:30 a.m. oil change was completed, my sister and I were driving home just as the sun was trying to break through the fog. It was beautiful, and we looked at each other and said….”Where can we go to get pictures of this?”

And…lucky for us we were only one exit away from one of my favorite parks, Holly Recreation, where Katie and I used to camp and wander the trails.

I felt a twinge of grief as I contemplated visiting one of her parks without her. But as we entered the park I realized the best place for pictures would be down near the lake and there was a parking lot Katie and I hardly ever used that would work perfectly for morning fog photos.

I felt relieved. I could be in the park, but not in Katie’s favorite part where I would feel her loss the most. Progress ,on this grief journey, is often made with tiny steps.

We parked and walked up and down that section of the road, taking pictures of the sun rising above the water, and the fog through the trees.

The reflections were gorgeous and we probably looked like crazy old ladies as we giggled and called back and forth to “come here and look at this!”

And when our fingers were frozen and our feet were soggy we climbed back into the car laughing as we cranked the heat up and scrolled through the images on our phones, each one better than the one before.

You can’t beat a good morning adventure – Katie taught me that over and over and over again. I like to think she was with us that morning, saying “I told you mama! You have to get out of bed early in the morning to catch the best stuff!”

I know, little girl, I know.


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You’ve seen it all before

I had a chance visit my favorite park this week, a late afternoon decision.

You’ve seen images like this before. I’ve taken hundreds of images just like these.

But of course I took the camera.

And of course there were birds — that was the point, is almost always the point when I walk these trails.

And luckily the birds were hungry.

Very, very hungry.

And of course we had a very good time. Because, really, how could we not?

I think the birds had a good time too.

For the most part anyway.

So I’m hoping you don’t mind seeing images like this again. Because I never tire of taking them.


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It’s not goodbye

I’ve been thinking about the best way to share this, some eloquent words that capture the loss our family experienced this week. But there is no easy way.

My last post, Wordless Wednesday is an image I captured in May when my aunt and I were walking through Hudson Mills Park. She was looking for dogwood and trillium. I was trying to capture as much of the experience as she’d let me.

Which means most of my images were taken from behind.

We walked slower this spring than we had the year before, took the shorter trails, gauged whether a hill was too steep or manageable. We stopped to rest on convenient benches more often. There was, after all, no hurry. In fact there was more savoring the moments because we both knew it was our last spring together.

She’d been diagnosed with a terminal cancer and she had chosen not to take any treatment. They told her she’d have a good summer, and, right on schedule, she did.

My sister and brother came up, then my sister came up two more times. We visited her as often as we could. We attended her last symphony, brought her simple suppers rather than expecting the elaborate meals she has made for us our entire lifetimes. We swam with her at her community pool, walked in her beloved Mathi gardens and the University of Michigan Arboretum.

On our last visit, she sat in a wheelchair, pulling sheets of music for my sister and me to play, music she had written when her children were small. She sang along. We played music until she seemed tired, and then we talked just a bit. “Say Hi to Dad,” my sister said, “He’ll surely be waiting for you.”

It was a gift, she said, that she had these past months to spend with her children, with us, with her friends. And so that she could plan and arrange to make things as easy as possible for her family to carry on without her.

We all cried a bit, and then had a long, last hug.

This past Monday morning she left us to say hi to her brother, my dad, and to her husband, her mother, my mother, and so many other family members who had gone on ahead. And on Saturday we all said “see you later” at the most beautiful funeral I’ve ever attended.

She had, of course, planned it all, including her own words to all of us, the hymns to be sung, the prelude and postlude played by the incredible pianist, and the bagpipes played by my sister.

The time she spent with us was our gift as well. She was a gift to all of us, her family, her friends, musicians in her beloved symphony, her neighbors, the students she taught, the community band in which she played.

I can’t be sad, though I will miss her so much; she had a wonderful and joyous homecoming on Monday morning. And, as someone said at the funeral, she’s probably up there organizing heaven right now.

Thanks for all the good times, good meals, good conversation and good company, Aunt Becky. I’ll see you on down the road.