Largely wasted 5 of 6 nights straight. The first night was mostly just a get out and do something, shoot something, night with Tyler, Chris and Chris' friend Mike. They wound up saying they'd head to Murray Hill if I took my bigfoot costume with. Why do I have one to begin with? 50% is a few years ago we made a haunted deal for my sister's kids and friends in the hills by my parent's place. Didn't exactly need it for what we did, but thought it might be fun to also have for bored photography stuff. Like insert him casually into photos lol. Above not so casually.

I still had the lower part on during this sequence. I was standing outside talking to them behind me in their car, when a car rounds the corner. This like 1 a.m. or something. I didn't want to be seen wearing it for obvious reasons, so tried to run back to my car. They probably saw bigfoot butt diving into a car as they rounded the corner. We thought of many fun things to do with that thing, but did not do any of those. Some other night.

4 of the 5 nights Chris and I went out with the intention of shooting moonlit fog from above, when it seas out in the valley. The problem is it refuses to ever actually happen with a moon. The other reason we went out was several solar flares giving aurora hopes. We kept going, happy to take either. Those 4 nights we got a lot of neither. The above one was damn windy and started off foggy. I think I can guess on winds fairly well now and I'd say we were having frequent 50+ mph gusts up on the hill. It was actually one of the more fun nights of the bunch. Most every night coyotes can be heard after midnight. 3 of the nights I got hiccups right around 2 a.m. which I began to find odd. This night cirrus was scooting east on strong winds aloft. But watch this segment of the timelapse video below and how fast the low clouds are moving north in comparison. Very strong warm air advection off the deck this night and on the deck for that matter.

After 11 pm we had damn thick low fog on the bottoms. It was north of Modale to about Little Sioux. It was a solid 2 yellow highway dashes visibility. As in you couldn't see 3 of those from the car. It was crazy how it was doing this and blowing around so fast. It was like wind driven hail fog. But hell if this wall of thicker stuff could ever advance north into Little Sioux and Murray Hill area. The terrain there has to have everything to do with that. The way the wind hits the hills and that portion of bluffs that jets out there. It was always like 1-2 miles south of Little Sioux you'd hit it and there was this 1/4 mile hole near the Mondamin cemetery. I went through that when I gave up on Murray hill early on. It was thicker as I was heading back, which got me to turn back around and go to Murray Hill again. That is when Chris then came up. When we left that morning it was the same freaking locations.   The fog blowing around right now was just crazy looking, but pretty impossible to show on a still. It was much like smoke blowing around in a wildfire, but hugging the ground. Probably 3:30 a.m. now.

These evidently aren't in order as this was the same night but early while up on Murray Hill, playing in the hurricane winds. I'm blowing stuff on the tree evidently. Hard to convey blowing without doing that hand thing.

Chris above me with moon halo action. Not sure how I didn't kill myself climbing that barbwire fence or shock myself on that damn electrical line running along it. Wearing coveralls and rubber boots made getting over that twice, that much more of a joy. I started with the thought, don't half ass this attempt or you'll pay for it. Just about did just that crossing back over later, as I didn't commit as well as the first time. It was way way way better on this side of that fence because the hill blocked the winds some. Doing star trails otherwise felt like a lost cause. Strong enough winds to knock you back off your feet, while trying to not let it happen.

This was the last night of the 6 night stretch. Auroras were a lock this night! But no, it wasn't to be. We had certainly earned it, going out 5 of 6 nights. But half the cooler stuff I ever see is stuff I saw out looking for something else. I try to never get too down on what isn't happening and look for what is. The lighting and sky this night was simply amazing. Super duper clear aloft. You'd have to look at the moon for a second before you could see the features, it was blowing out. We shot this scene with moon light and snow last year, but it was far brighter looking this time. We got this sweet fetch of mid-level clouds streaming ne over us and south of us(ok maybe not overly mid-level I guess). It was calling to us, "don't worry about those auroras that will be weak and moon-washed out anyway....look at me!"

Chris and Evan out shooting now.

Such cool lightning. We were even getting moon rays from these. That and the foreground would repeatedly go dark and bright.

The star trails didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I knew I needed clear gaps for stacking images, but I didn't think the cloud streaks would be that dashed. Doesn't seem there is that big of a gap between shutters. I don't know what dug that hole there but it was sorta freaky. Kept waiting for something to come on out. It's pretty big.

Trying to come up with new ideas, while waiting on our damn auroras.

The time lapse video of this surely cooler than the star trail image.

I had to cheat on this one. I got the idea sitting there, thought I can roll the car forward to blur the ground on the first exposure, then do the trail and mask in that foreground later. I didn't blur it enough, so wound up just blurring it in photoshop.

Early on we saw these two roll clouds to the south(these are north), that kept this vortex shape for a good 30 minutes. Later on there were simply tons of these to the north. Evan and Chris had left by now, which sorta sucked. Now I was by myself and something kept making noises by the barn lol. That would be a horrible time for someone in a bigfoot outfit to come running out of there. Anyway, many of these tubes were clearly vortices of sorts. I didn't get any good time lapse of them really, but watch the very end of the time lapse below. You can see the clouds tumbling over on top, doing rolls.   You can see just how tube like these are, but it really doesn't give the whole picture, as they went clear across the rest of the sky like that and did this for over an hour. There was clearly rolling shear in that layer as seen on the time lapse video at the end.

Rather than messing with the star trail and time lapse thing(camera in one place forever) I should have been doing more of straight still photography. The lighting was silly. You get the right conditions and the sky up around the full moon can be jet black. Then down lower the rest of the sky looks hazy, but will expose blue like daytime on a longer shutter. Pretty much 400 ISO and 10-15 seconds on these here.

More of the moon being dimmed down during this one...dimmer foreground.

100 ISO now, 73 seconds. Some creature in the big hole waiting for me to slip up.

100 ISO 114 seconds. Foreground way darker as moon mostly blocked. The clouds up there actually didn't even look that banded. Just like a thicker blob of mid-level stuff going over the moon.

This was when I was hearing the most noise from the barn area. My car was further down the road too, as I had it out of the shots before. You can only stand there so long waiting on the exposure to be long enough, hearing noises, before you say enough and head back to the car.   Time lapse video best watched with 720p on. It wasn't meant to be a time lapse, so most sections are really short and fast. Jeez just noticed how bad even 720p is. Juuussssttttt about to completely swear off youtube. Seems so much worse anymore.