The Night Shift

I know I've said this a few times already here but having a family changes everything. You get to wake up with a beautiful girl by your side every morning. There's also a wonderful little person whose whole world revolves around you. You always have someone to laugh with when you're happy or to cheer you up when you're down. The goodness of it all makes it easy to forget about things like updating a blog.

Not wanting to spend too much time away from Mir and Abby I found myself often going out for photos after everyone else has fallen asleep. One place I thought would be good for night photos was the open space in Vacaville I'd visited several times in the past few years. Specifically the old dead oak tree looked like a perfect fit for star trails photography. One late night in July I headed down and set up a few cameras for a some different angles of the tree.
Facing north:

Facing northeast, back over part of the city:

There was an amazing amount of stars visible just a quarter mile hike up the hill from town. Even the Milky Way galaxy was bright enough to capture nicely.

A heavy amount of light pollution from Fairfield and Vacaville washed out the horizon but I kind of like the way the sky blends to black up the photo.

After seeing how well the galaxy showed up I wanted to try a few more angles with the tree. I headed back in mid-September. The Milky Way had shifted in the sky and was now more towards the east.

There is nothing to the northeast of Vacaville so the sky was nice and dark in that direction even though the autumn Milky Way wasn't as bright. And the light from the city lit up the tree and hillside perfectly.

While shooting the old tree I set up another camera for star trails around another oak down the hill. Looking north again:

I also liked the boulders around this tree and set up another star trails shot to include them, this time looking east.

Between those two shoots we took a weekend trip up to Lake Tahoe to hang out on the beaches. Again, after everyone went to bed I headed out to watch the meteor shower. Inspired by the first trip to Vacaville I wanted to get the Milky Way with a meteor. I went to the lookout over Emerald Bay and set up. Unfortunately the two didn't cooperate so again it's a tree and a galaxy.

Kiva beach has been a favorite of ours since we found it a couple years ago. I went there to try a different angle for the meteorites. It was a nice night out and there were a lot of other people laying on the sand watching the show. Still no shooting stars over the galaxy but the view over the lagoon was still really pretty.

Another good show in the sky I love to watch is the River Cats Saturday night fireworks. The first weekend of August I got off work early on Saturday and decided to try 3D at the Tower Bridge again. As I left Davis the sky started flashing. We don't get lightning too often around here and I got excited thinking I could get fireworks, lightning, and the iconic bridge all in one amazing 3D photo. I found a good parking spot and hurried over to the promenade. Just as I fired my first camera a huge bolt cracked across the sky over the stadium and across the bridge. Two more strikes came a couple minutes after. This is a combined shot of all three.

Unfortunately the show was over before I got my higher resolution cameras set up for 3D. While waiting for the fireworks to start the bridge was lifted for the hornblower river cruise ship to pass. I took a long exposure shots of it going thru and kept the cameras in the same place until the fireworks then combined the images again.

The first time I shot the fireworks here they coincided with the raising of the bridge. I've been trying to capture that moment again ever since but have only succeeded with the magic of photoshop.

A couple weeks later and another early night off work meant another chance to shoot the fireworks. This time I wanted something radically different. After some searching on google maps, I went a little over a mile away to the top of the Sutter Hospital parking garage. This gave a good view of the top of the Capitol building and the Sacramento skyline with an opening right where the fireworks were.

I don't want to sound like a cheater but this is another composite image. Notice how the big bloom on top becomes squiggley away from its center? On a six second exposure the camera was still for about 3 seconds then slightly wiggled. The shake created squigglies in the fireworks. I combined that with another unshaken photo to keep the buildings crisp.

As we got into autumn I didn't have to rely on starry skies or fireworks for good shows. I still haven't found a great spot around town for sunsets. I tried going back to the lone tree south of Davis that I sunsetted before

Did a hike around Lagoon Valley park in Vacaville but the water level was too low and it gave me a dirty foreground

I even got so desperate I used a curve in the road for a foreground.

Pretty skies are just not interesting enough on their own. But this is California, there's always a beautiful scene out there a short car ride away. I used the UC Davis football game at Cal Poly as a good excuse to take a little family vacation and, hopefully, find a pretty place to photograph. We left late Friday night, so Abby would sleep for the five hour car ride, and got into Morro Bay at almost 3am. I think there was a pretty sunrise Saturday but on 3 1/2 hours sleep all I could do was peak my head out the window and fall back into bed. There was a really nice sunset that night, too, at least what I saw of it from the football stadium. After Mir and Abby fell asleep I went into night mode again. The moon was setting perfectly between Morro Rock and a small rock to its north. A fishing boat was also leaving the harbor, its spotlight providing great fill light on the massive rock.

The moon lit up the clouds nicely and also balanced out the two parking lot lights on the other side. It's not the great sunrise/sunset shot I'd hoped for but I'm still happy with it. By morning the fog developing at the top of the rock had clouded the whole bay and ruined any chance of a sunrise photo op.

The one place that always looks great and I can take the family with me on photo expeditions is San Francisco and the Golden Gate. This past week we took Miranda's mom Patti down to Baker Beach to look for seaglass. Thanks to a re-broken arm I got to ride passenger and play with the camera. Usually we hold our breath and make a wish thru the tunnel north of the Golden Gate but this time I was too busy taking pictures.

We played down on Baker Beach until sunset when Mir, Abby, and I wandered down to a storm drain flowing into the ocean. I hadn't seen it before but liked the way the bridge reflected in it. I talked Mir into letting me stay a few minutes later to get the night lights in the water.

It's nice to know I don't have to sneak out in the middle of the night alone to get great shots.