January 28, 2013

Just enough of a dusting this morning to add a little interest to this icy cold scene along the West Branch of the Brandywine in Newlin Township.

My friend Nancy and I went out Tuesday night…or…actually…Wednesday morning, to try to view and capture the Quadrantids Meteor display.  We arrived on the scene around 2 am. with a balmy 13 degree reading on the temp gauge.  The best display was originating from the northeastern sky…which was flooded with light pollution.  With no sign of any meteor action during the first hour, we spent some time shooting towards the western sky with the waxing gibbous moon setting…and a sky full of stars to view with very little light pollution.

I saw a total of two meteors   No big deal.  I mean…you’ve seen one meteor, you’ve seen them all.  Right?  Agreed!

This was one of my favorites of the night.

A 6-shot panorama of a wonderfully foggy sunrise at ChesLen Preserve last weekend.

Spent some time Thursday night…between storms…at ChesLen Preserve.  Again.  My intention was to try to capture some lightning strikes.  We were right on the edge of the storm fronts so we had some great upper and lower level clouds…blowing every which way.  Just around the time that the sun was setting the clouds formed a small, clear pocket that allowed some majestic light beams through.  It was beautiful to say the least.  Unfortunately (there’s always one of those isn’t there?), there was nothing but trees in front of me.  I couldn’t get a nice ‘landscape’ shot with the sun-rays.  I threw on the 100-400mm telephoto to just try to isolate the most beautiful part of the sky at the time.

The bummer part was that all of this amazing lightning was going on behind me at the time of trying to get a decent composition of the western sky.  By the time I got what I thought was a decent shot of the setting sun’s colors, I had slim pickin’s for lightning.  There were times when I looked over my shoulder and the entire sky was covered with those wild, electrical tentacles from the lightning.  I did manage one decent image, though, not all of the lightning fingers are visible on this image.

Some times you hit the home run, some times you strike out.  There are times when you just hit for average, like last night

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Had a great morning shooting the heavy fog and dew covered webs at the ChesLen Preserve.  I have hundreds of ‘dew covered web’ images and was hoping to get something a little bit different.  Tough looking into the brightness of where the sun is coming up, through the lens.