Ashfall sunrise July 22. I think this was the same morning as the auroras. You can tell an ashfall sunrise/sunset by the pinkish rays banding out across the sky. There have been a lot of these of late. The other night I saw the most insane one yet, but of course did not have my camera with me then. This one was cool with the low fog around. The mosquitoes however were not cool. I had bug spray on but they did not seem to care.

Sun climbing above the fog and the bluffs to the east. Top of the fog here was about even with the top of the bluffs...well the angle anyway.

This is one of the cool things about low fog, often driven by moist crops on cool mornings, you can shoot it without being in it. There was this cool bank of it just sitting over there.

August 11th now, out on yet another morning looking for low fog scenes. I wanted moon-lit fog from a hill but there wasn't enough low fog up north to bother with. I waste so much gas driving up there only to run out of low fog. I noticed this however, a crazy moon corona. I was near Desoto and in a lot of low fog. When the fog thickness and depth above me was just right the crazy corona would go nuts.

I tried a 3 frame HDR but the corona was never the same as I tried to get them.

Same morning. Corny sunrise shot lol.

Evening on the 11th now, getting ready to shoot/watch the Persieds Meteor shower(which largely sucked). This storm was as pathetic as they come. It looks far stronger than it was. The thing had a tiny skinny anvil going to the south with little precip. I was actually surprised it was producing any lightning at all, once it got darker and one could see.

Telephoto of very red moon rising. Shooting the moon sucks, can't let the foreground expose much since the moon will be soft if you do.

I lost interest photographing meteors pretty early. It's never been fun and almost never leads to an interesting picture anyway. So I decided to do star trails from this cemetery and watch for meteors between clicking new exposures. To do star trails with digital you pretty much have to do the stacking method. Do more exposures back to back and then in photoshop stack them on one another and select "lighten" from the layer options. Bright areas show through without brightening the whole image in the process. I was using 400 ISO, 10mm, at F3.5 for 3 minutes. If one wants less noise don't go for 3 minutes. I had to though, to light up the foreground from the moonlight. It's not as nice doing it towards the moon like this obviously. I wanted to try, mostly because of the low fog starting to form out there. I thought I could make a cool timelapse of stills from it. Well fog vanished anyway. It wasn't this cloudy either. There were some slow moving patches up there and when you stack they all show up(the same cloud moves and is on each frame). The bright light left of center is the moon obviously. Town lights on the right. I really do not go out of my way to be in a cemetery, especially at night! Coming back from a chase one evening I noticed it was a little higher here and there was an open view to the east. If one uses a gravel road someone will always be going by and stopping. This doesn't seem to be a problem in a cemetery. The Arkansas ice storm I never searched out that cemetery, the road just lead me to it. Anyway, I'm not a cemetery person even if it may seem so. That circumzenthial arc thing I guess I wound up in a cemetery too. So that is at least 3 accounts this year with a cemetery lol.

Facing away from the moon is a lot easier. Lighting on the foreground is better/brighter so less noise issues there and the sky is darker. I find 30 minutes for trails at 10mm to be just right. If you go a lot longer they never seem that much more interesting anyway and it takes sooooo much more time to come away with one single image.

I can say the challenge to shooting in a cemetery at night is keeping your mind busy. I use the time on my phone to unclick and reclick the cable release/shutter. Just having to monitor your exposure length like that gives the brain something to do other than see ghosts. See I'm not a cemetery person, as I really really don't want to see a ghost while there(or see anything really, as a rabbit at night would be spooky there...unless you knew it was a rabbit and not a hand or something crawling around the place.....see this here is just my mind at home with the lights on...you can only imagine there given any idle time). Must do more moonlit star trail scenes. Just do them while the moon is down pretty low still and when there are zero clouds, as even patchy streaming clouds will blotch out the shot once you stack all the frames. If you want to find the north star(center one) find the big dipper and follow the line up from the outside edge of the pale. That points in the general area of the north star. I noticed the road pointing that way and had to try this shot. Too bad the road turns. Probably be a cool shot on a big hill somewhere or at a different latitude that makes the north star lower.