The middle of nowhere is somewhere

I've always been facinated with the stars and astronomy. Since I've had my Nikon I've wanted to take a "star trails" photograph. It takes patience to get a solid star trails shot. The moon has to be new (or nearly new), you have to have no clouds, no light polution (which usually means being in the middle of nowhere), a tripod and long battery life. And, when you have all that you have to get all your settings right on your camera. A lot has to come together to make a good star trails photograph.

Well it finally all came together in Big Bend National Park which is about 500 miles west of Austin (or basically a stones throw from Mexico). Andrea, Ken and I went out to Big Bend in January this year. I brought all the necessary stuff, I just knew we were going to get it right. I'd tried several times before that and it never worked out how I would have hoped (Lake Chelan, WA; Snook, TX; Enchanted Rock TX State Park). So I waited until late when all the campers had calmed down for the night and flashlights, grills and headlights were retired for the evening. I set up my tripod on a picnic table and aimed the camera towards the north star. The stars all rotate around the north star, and since that's the axis the earth spins on it makes for circular trails. We were in the Chisos Basin basecamp of Big Bend, so the mountains made for a wonderful foreground.

It was cold out there, especially that night. The silence makes it a bit colder. So I sat there in my folding chair and waited and thought. I still remember how calming it was to be there waiting. After the shot was done the camera still needed about 45 minutes to process the file (don't ask me why, but I guess thats just the nature of digital SLRs on shots like that). At this point I was so tired. It was very late and had been a long day. I tried to stay up and wait on it, but I ended up falling asleep in the tent. But the camera beeped when it was done processing the file and woke me up. I was like a kid at Christmas pulling up the file to see how it turned out. I was so excited. I remember waking Andrea up and making her look at it on that tiny little camera screen. You could hardly see it, but I knew it was good.

That's when I really felt like I'd made it as a photographer. I'd finally reached a shot I'd dreamed about. All it took was a short drive out to the middle of nowhere.