Mt Pleasant Pt 2 and Soldier Creek

I went on a couple of camping trips recently, and managed to do some shooting! Somewhere around Mt. Pleasant, a friend of mine and I found this cool old cabin, which makes for a great foreground:


The cabin was behind a fence, and I wish I had been brave enough to hop over it and get closer--a 14 mm lens makes everything look pretty small. Some day I'll invest in a better lens; for now I've gotta go with budget equipment. -_- Anyway, Mt. Pleasant is pretty and fun. Unfortunately, this camp out happened on the last day of school, so I was already pretty worn out and sleep deprived...I didn't have the energy to do anything more than classic Milky Way shots. Oh well, I never get tired of those.

So last night, I headed to Soldier Creek campground with some other friends who were interested in going out shooting with me. The first couple hours of the camp out were a nightmare--we got there at about 2pm, and it was cold and windy and starting to sprinkle. By the time we got our tent up, it was pouring rain and thundering so exuberantly I was expecting to struck by lightning. So there we were, soaked, freezing and huddled in our thankfully rain proofed tent, trying to be optimistic but really thinking of bailing and going home. We held on, went out when the rain tapered off and attempted making a fire, got taken by surprise by another deluge, huddled a little more in our tent playing card games, and then finally the storms passed and the sun came out.


We got our fire built, made some dinner and s'mores, went walking around the lake, watched Iron Man on my iPad while we waited for it to get dark enough, poked our heads out the tent at about midnight and at last beheld a cloudless (ish) night sky in all its starry glory. So we hiked down the hillside to a little peninsula in the lake to take some pictures. I just have straight forward Milky Way pictures again--I attempted a panorama, but it failed. Like worse than I've ever failed before. Panoramas are taking a really long time to get the hang of, especially since you're literally pointing and shooting in the dark. Oh well. I got a composite shot, at least:


No star trails either--by the time I was ready to try one, the clouds were rolling back in. Next time, for sure! The real reason I wanted this particular campground was the lake--I've really really been wanting to try getting a lake with the stars reflected in it. Unfortunately, this lake was too active for reflections. And it'd been storming and windy earlier, and it's HUGE.


So it was a fun trip, and I got some practice shooting in. Still have a long way to go...but, as I keep telling myself, I've got plenty of time to master this particular skill. The stars aren't going anywhere. :)