A Frosty Evening Seasoned with Geminids

Yes, all, I am in fact still alive.  I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted!  In October, my job got absolutely nutty when I started working on a huge, new complex case.  I love being busy at work, and I am enjoying the crazy new case all the travel it's requiring, and all the other ordinary environmental legal work that has suddenly cropped up.  Unfortunately, there's a downside to long hours at work: everything else in my life suffers a bit.

I went from mid-October to mid-December without so much as picking up my camera.  I still have a bunch of autumn Adirondack photos from October that I haven't even edited yet.  (It doesn't help that our old computer needs replacement and is not properly running the Picasa program I use for editing).  My house is a wreck, and I am in the midst of the annual end-of-the-year-way-too-much-to-do rush.  Gah!  It's stressful.

BUT.  I am grateful to a former colleague and camera enthusiast friend of mine for his nudge in the direction of my camera this week.  I posted a comment on Facebook about seeing one of the Geminid meteors while I was taking the dogs out, and he immediately challenged me to a duel of the cameras: which of us could take a better photo of the meteors?

Tired though I was, and despite the long to-do list for the evening, I donned my warmest winter gear and headed out up the road for a quiet dark spot along the Erie Canal to do some night photography.  It was lovely and peaceful out there, despite the near heart attack a wandering coyote gave me at one point.  I saw dozens and dozens of meteors, some incredibly bright, and sometimes more than one blazing meteor at a time.  All my stress seemed to melt away as I stood there in awe of the stars.

Unfortunately, I am no good at night photography.  I have to do a lot more of it it seems, so I get the hang of all the settings.  Most of my photos had so much noise in them that they were useless.  I did, however, get one shot I liked.  And since my friend's and my photography contest only required entry of one shot, I guess I did alright!  Incidentally, I believe the brightness on the horizon in this shot is actually light pollution from the City of Syracuse, some 20+ miles away.

It was a lovely silent night for me.  Hopefully I'll make time for more such nights in the near future.  And I hope you all are making time for moments of frosty peace, too.

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