Adventures in Photography

Even though I haven’t been working this past month, I’ve somehow managed to get incredibly behind on my blogging.  It’s strange—and maybe you’ve experienced this as well—but I tend to feel busy and overwhelmed by everything I want to accomplish in life regardless of how empty or full my schedule happens to be.  I think my sister’s explanation for this was spot on when she said it’s because we prioritize things differently when we have loads of extra time every day.

So what have I been prioritizing so much that I haven’t had time to write a few paragraphs on my blog? Well, in addition to the time I’ve spent playing outdoors (I promise I WILL tell you about these adventures one of these days), I’ve kept myself surprisingly occupied with wedding planning, attending puppy classes once a week, and completing an avalanche safety course.  But more than anything else, I’ve been spending time playing with the new camera I purchased for myself as a Christmas present.  I had to get an entire 200-page book just to learn how to use it!  I also bought a book on photography and have spent quite a bit of time learning all about aperture size, shutter speed, and ISO limits.  And of course, figuring out how to edit images in my new Photoshop software has been a big project in itself.  Lastly—and this one I hate to admit—keeping up on my new Instagram account is both time consuming and addictive.

Even while I’m not out adventuring in the wild, I still want to practice my photography skills so I’m ready for when I do get the chance to capture those beautiful mountain views. So I mostly just walk around the yard taking pictures of trees, moss, and whatever else I can find.   Some of these pictures actually turn out okay!  Most of them, however, are lame.

I had some free time over Christmas and decided it was time to practice my “glowing tent” shots.  So what did I do?  I set up a tent on one of the trails near my parents’ house and decorated it with lights.  It took several hours to set up and required hauling an enormous battery into the middle of the woods, but I think it turned out okay:

 One of the things I’m most excited about is the progress I’ve made in my astrophotography (i.e., my photos of the night sky).  At first, all of my pictures were pretty terrible.  Either that, or they just came out very strange looking.

But I must have eventually learned from my mistakes because, somewhere along the way, after much trial and error, the pictures began getting better and better.  I could actually see the stars!  And not just that—there were millions of them!  Many than I could ever see with my naked eye.

And I was absolutely ecstatic when I first captured the Milky Way.

But so far, the most magical moment in all of my astrophotography endeavors was the one where I captured my first shooting star.  I’d been standing outside the Mountaineers lodge at Mount Baker for over an hour in the freezing cold taking pictures of the night sky.  Just as I was packing up to go inside, I saw a brilliant flash dart across the sky above me.  It was so bright that it actually scared me for a second.  When I realized it was a shooting star, I decided to stay out a little longer in hopes that I could capture one on camera.  And I’m so glad I did because only a few minutes later, this happened:

There are so many things I still need to learn about the world of photography.  But I can already tell that capturing the beauty of the natural world on camera is going to be a lifelong passion of mine.  And I am so excited to see where it takes me.