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As I write this, my second spring PhotoConnect is just a few days behind me and my next adventure, the Great North American Total Solar Eclipse, is a week ahead. But I’m reflecting on my adventure last December to witness and photograph the Geminid Meteor Shower. The original plan was to meet two fellow VPPA members. Unfortunately, Dan Emmerman and David “Buck” Buckwalter weren’t able to join me, but that was just one part of the plan that didn’t work out. If you prefer to skip to the technical stuff, scroll to the end. Otherwise, follow along and you’ll see what else didn’t work out.

I started from home at about 11:20am, Thursday, 14 December 2023, heading toward Spruce Knob, a location Dan recommended a few days before at our Northern District holiday party. With an elevation of 4,863 feet, Spruce Knob is the highest peak in West Virginia. It also claims the highest lake in the state. Both its peak and the lake were potential shooting locations.

About 2 hours 15 minutes after leaving home, I started up the mountain. A few miles later, I noticed a steady increase in the amount of snow on the ground, remains from the snowfall of the previous Sunday. I didn’t think much of it, still focused on the destination – getting to the lake (or the peak) and setting up for a long winter’s shoot. Then I started to see the wet areas on the road were turning to ice and snow.

After a slippery sliding moment and the thought of tumbling down the mountainside, a stubbornly persistent vision from the movie Misery of the Annie Wilkes character, sledgehammer in hand (so awesomely played by Kathy Bates) stuck in my mind’s eye. I decided to give up the Spruce Knob location.

Going back down the mountain took a lot longer. I inched my way down that icy snow packed quarter-mile stretch of road I had just navigated.

With my right foot constantly nursing the brake, lower leg muscles soon began to ache. According to my Explorer’s digital speedometer I held my speed to 1. Occasionally, it increased to 2 miles per hour. For a highway speed demon, I was amazed how that normally insignificant difference seemed enormous. But I finally made it. A short way further had occasional areas of snow and ice, but enough spots of wet, not frozen, pavement that I quit holding my breath.

I stopped at the intersection of US Route 33 and Briery Gap Road. Now what would I do? I drove all that way, had a well-laid plan, or so I thought. Go home? Nah! I remembered passing Seneca Rocks. It’s beautiful chunks of rock jutting straight up toward the heavens. I thought that might provide an interesting base to ground the nighttime sky and the meteor shower. But instead of driving straight there I thought, “I have time. I’ll drive some of these local roads to see if I can find that perfect spot.” For nearly two hours I drove the area, but found nothing as special as Seneca Rocks.

So, Seneca Rocks it would be.

Having finally chosen my alternate site, I set up – tripod firmly in place, camera mounted with fully-charged battery, empty memory cards and lens warmer snugly wrapped. Although it was cold, and getting colder, the sky was awesomely clear. All I had to do now was wait until dark and trigger the shutter. Then my camera would take over. So, I sat and waited. Time – such a non-linear thing. It slowed. If it had a speedometer, it would probably show a 1 or a 2 like my Explorer’s a couple hours ago. Einstein and relativity – quantum physics – Schrödinger's cat – holy cow man, focus! Think Murphy’s Law. Review my plan. Check my settings. This was an excellent time to make sure I was ready. So I double-checked everything.

At last, daylight turned to twilight in the valley. Sunlight still glowed on the uppermost peaks. I looked around and saw the streetlights in the parking lot. Then, behind me, I noticed the path lights along the stairs to the visitor center. I thought, “They couldn’t be too bright.” As twilight faded into night, I realized, not for the first time that day, I was wrong.

Just before 7pm I started shooting. The darker it got, the more my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, the brighter those lights became. Holy cow were they bright! I tried to imagine what I had in my Explorer that I could use to cover the six or eight lights along the stairs. Nope…nothing. “Maybe they’ll turn off later,” I thought. Thankfully, at 10:30pm, they did.

The rest of the time ticked by much more quickly. My most comparable experience to a meteor shower is a fireworks display, but a meteor shower is in extreme slow motion. I gasped an ooh or an ah at every meteor. I believe that’s a neural reflex. I couldn’t stop if I wanted. I captured 83 meteors in 7.5 hours. That’s an ooh or ah about every 5.5 minutes. Might sound boring, but it wasn’t! Remember that non-linear time thing. However, there’s not much more to tell. Except perhaps a bit about the 19-degree air. Even with layered clothing, winter jacket, gloves, hand warmers, watch cap, blanket and all that cocooned in a sleeping bag rated for 20 degrees, by about 2:30am with 1,870 images, I had enough.

I broke everything down, loaded my Explorer and headed home. By the time I got there the caffeine had worn off and my heart rate dropped to normal. Although I was anxious to cull, edit and composite my night’s…what? Work? Nah. Effort? Didn’t seem like it. Adventure? Yeah, I think that feels right, adventure. I had an adventure. It was the first all-nighter in many years and I was exhausted. I believe I was unconscious before my head met my pillow.

Visions of meteors danced in my head. Not really, but if you’re interested, here are a few notes. Also, I mention a few specific items and provide a hyperlink; however, I don’t endorse them. Those are just what I use. Other similar, perhaps better, items are available:

1. Find a good location – tools we have today make this so easy (Google Maps, and a light pollution map [https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/]). Get to know the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale (1-9, best = 1; worst = 9). Seneca Rocks is a pretty good location (Bortle Scale, Class 3). I’m planning a visit to my brother in New Mexico and camping at the Cosmic Campground in Gila National Forest, an International Dark Sky Sanctuary (Bortle Scale, Class 1), for the Milky Way or whatever might be found in the night sky.
2. Check the weather – and check more often as the event draws nearer. The Weather Channel is ok, but Astrospheric (https://astrospheric.com/) was developed by and for astronomers and astrophotographers. They use multiple sources of weather data to compile forecasts. Like anything worth using, there’s a bit of a learning curve if you want to use all its features.<.li>
3. Plan your shot – I use an app called PhotoPills (https://www.photopills.com/), to plan a variety of celestial events. It takes some learning too, but Rafael “The Bard” Pons has some excellent how-to videos and instructional documents.<.li>
4. Search YouTube – a superb source of information and instructional videos (as if you didn’t know). Again, PhotoPills is an excellent source, but there are so many others.
5. Sturdy tripod (a must!) – also consider using spike feet and anchoring it with a sandbag or whatever is handy. The steadier, the better.
6. Wide-angle lens (I used my 15-35mm at 15mm) – capture as much of the sky as possible. Lesson learned: I wish I had aimed a bit higher, included more sky, less foreground.
7. Lens warmer – as you know, a temperature change and humidity can cause condensation, which is not good for your lens or your images. Lens warmers are relatively inexpensive ($22 or so) and can prevent condensation. I recommend having a lens warmer.
8. Cold-weather clothing – winter’s typically lower humidity makes for better nighttime photography. It’s also cold. So, dress in layers (read my note above, if you haven’t already, about my clothing for this adventure), but plan to get uncomfortably cold despite your clothing choice. If you choose a Bortle Class 1 location, even if it’s warm during the day, low humidity and clear skies can mean nighttime temperatures quite cooler than daytime. The high the day of my adventure was 48 degrees. By 2:30am it was 19 degrees.
9. Hand warmers – if you plan to do this type of shoot, consider hand warmers. Once extremities get cold, it gets more and more difficult to warm them back up. Just prior to this adventure, I purchased rechargeable hand warmers from Amazon. However, those are bulky and wouldn’t fit in my boots (Yes, they can warm feet too). I wished I had some of the smaller, chemical type. They’re similar in shape to restaurant sugar packets, just a bit larger. Search “hand warmers” and you’ll get a plethora of choices. Next time I’ll have Hot Hands (https://hothands.com/) in addition to the rechargeable ones.
10. Intervalometer – if your camera doesn’t include an intervalometer, you can buy one for around $50. I learned my camera’s intervalometer can be set from 1 to 99 images; however, set it to “00” and it will shoot until I turn off the camera or the battery dies.
11. Batteries – you should have at least two, several is better. I changed batteries three times in 7.5 hours of shooting. Only the few seconds it took me to swap batteries and restart the intervalometer interrupted the camera. Also, remember a means to recharge those batteries and any other battery-powered items. Backup power is important.
12. Experiment – what helped me most was setting up on my back deck well ahead of the meteor shower and experimenting with different settings. Below are the camera settings I used for the Geminid shower on my Canon R5. They are the same settings I concluded were good from my back-deck experimentation (Bortle Class 4); the reduced light pollution at Seneca Rocks (Bortle Class 3) didn’t change any settings. Your experience might be different. So, set up early; use your experimental settings to get in the ballpark; then adjust as necessary. My settings:
• Lens: 15-35mm @ 15mm (Filter? Nope!)
• ISO: 6400 (Noisy? Post-processing denoise is amazing, right?)
• f2.8
• Shutter: 13 seconds (experiment with your camera and lens; for mine, 13 seconds is the longest exposure with negligible motion blur)
• White Balance: 3850K (again, experiment with yours; start with 4000K and adjust +/- 100K until you find your preference)
• Intervalometer: 00 (indefinite # of shots) with a 1-second interval between shots
• Focus: I dreaded arriving home with nearly 1,900 blurry images. My vision is still 20/20 except up close. I need my readers. Even if you have perfect vision, use your LCD zoom to confirm that stars are crisp. Once set, consider taping your focus ring. Then forget it…well, almost. Temperature change can affect focus, or so I’m told.
• Reduce your LCD screen brightness. This will probably be obvious during your back-deck experimentation. If you haven’t experienced it already, an LCD brightness that can barely be seen in daylight will be blinding at night. My Canon R5 also has an “Eco Mode”. I’ve never used it and don’t plan to, but it’s an option if to save battery life.

That’s it for now. My main takeaway? I had a great adventure. I plan to have many more.

If you’d like to photograph a meteor shower, you’ll have an excellent chance this summer. The Perseid shower, a very active one (50+ meteors per hour), is expected to peak on or about 12 August 2024. So, do your research, study, and practice. Join me? I might try Spruce Knob again. Snow and ice are less likely to interfere.