In my recent climbing weekend out in Austin, I made sure to take advantage of the lack of light pollution. On the road out of Houston, the sun set directly in our eyes, which was less than ideal for Ben's driving but great for me in the passenger seat. I think I'm actually starting to get pretty good at taking photos from moving cars, and these honestly might be the least hideous pictures ever taken from the middle of I-10. 

I take too many photos of the moon, but the skies over Emma Long Metro and Oxford ranch parks were too clear and the moon was too bright to resist. I love how the angle just shifts overnight and the color of the moon changes slightly from the warmer yellow as it rises to a cool blue against the midnight blue sky of the early morning.

Things got weird when I tried to capture the sky full of stars over Oxford ranch. It was so dark out there in central TX that Orion had many more stars around it visible to the naked eye than just a few weeks ago when I was in Guadalupe and took the same shot. Almost no lightroom adjustments were needed for the pictures I got out of the camera after trying 6-8 second exposures with trees to frame the foreground. I backed off down the dusty drive to try and get the campfire as well, not sure how it would look. It turns out, 6 seconds is the perfect amount of time for a campfire to paint nearby trees a low orange and still expose the stars as well.

One of my pictures came out a little different, though. A whiteish-green spectre appears to float off the ground next to the campfire, with glowing eyes and long hooked fingers. While it's obviously just a byproduct of the long exposure, I can't fathom who it is or how they moved to generate that appearance in the picture. However... Abby mentioned having disturbing dreams that night, and when we left to head to Enchanted Rock, we passed the back of the ranch where we had camped. On the other side of the barbed wire fence from our site was the Oxford cemetery. I'm not saying it's a ghost, but it's more than a little eerie. And definitely a ghost.

Great things continue to happen when you sit on the couch and check your phone. John texted me a shot of Venus and Jupiter hanging bright beneath the waxing crescent moon, and I again made a dash for my camera. With almost no stars visible (thanks, light pollution in Houston!) I decided to try and frame the shots with the overhanging branches in my yard and roofs across the street. Then I went to a narrower lens to get some detailed shots of the waxing crescent, still with the companionship of Jupiter, bright and round alongside it. The first couple frame it in the context of my street, and are unfortunately less detailed since I had to have a wider angle to capture both planets. The last shots show only Jupiter and the Moon but reveal craters and detail on the surface of the thin crescent.

It was a freezing and windy night in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, but even if we were on the outskirts rather than in the heart of Texas, the stars came out big and bright by the time we arrived and set up camp. While everyone else settled into the tent, I did my traditional balancing of the camera on my backpack and tried to get the clearest shots I could of Orion, standing tall in the sky over the tallest peak in Texas. They came out great, proving the horsepower of my tiny 22mm lens again.

As we started our hike up King's Canyon, the moon hung in the sky over the streaked cliffs. Zooming all the way in with my 250mm lens, I was impressed by the clarity through the haze and morning atmosphere. The seas and craters stand out remarkably well. A great start to a great hike!

After watching the sunset from Moro Rock in Sequoia National Park, the stars filled the sky quickly. Before getting back in the car, I braved the mosquitos long enough to balance my camera on a stump and take some shots of the sky framed by the scorched trees next to the overlook. This is my favorite picture, with the 20 second long exposure at f/2 bringing out thousands of stars with a glow on the horizon where the Milky Way began. Worth every mosquito bite.

With some time on my hands, I wanted to capture the stars over the most iconic mountain in the US. I drove down to Reflection Lake, which normally provides gorgeous reflected views of the mountain. There was a bit of wind so the reflections were not an option. I scrambled down a snowy slope to the lakeshore and attempted to set up my camera. With no tripod, I built mounds of snow to try and prop my backpack and camera up at the right angle to see Rainier, and took fairly random guesses as to the settings I needed. It was immensely cold and about 2 am, so I took a few shots and got out of there before my hands froze. Looking at the pictures later, I was amazed to see I'd captured a shooting star in one of them, which is the cherry on top of a clear image of the snowy slopes that stand out in contrast to the royal blue sky peppered with sharp stars.

I was sitting on the couch when I glanced at my phone and saw notifications rolling in that there was an eclipse in progress. I scrambled for my camera and 250mm zoom lens and got to work. In my incredibly light-polluted backyard, I set up a chair to hold my broken tripod above the lights of my neighbors, and rolled a makeshift lens hood out of newspaper. Finally, I set up my remote shutter to take pictures without having to press the shutter and shake the camera. Zooming all the way in and opening the aperture all the way up, I got a few shots off as the still-white moon started to be eclipsed. The seas of Tranquility, Serenity, and Crises are clear in the upper right of this shot. As the eclipse reached totality, the gorgeous harvest/blood moon colors took over and the entire light side of the Moon became visible again. Given the prep time and location, I'm very pleased with the results!