Last-minute photo adventure!

Lauren and I decided, very last minute, to try shooting the Milky Way again. Saturday was a New Moon - best time to shoot the stars. It was also the weekend of the Perseids Meteor Shower.

We headed out around 5:30-6 pm up to North Georgia - a little over a 2-hour drive. We were hoping the cloud cover didn't kill our chances of getting photos. It was raining on the way.

I felt we were on the right track when I saw this gorgeous double rainbow.

It's hard to get photos shooting out the window of a moving car, but I went for it anyway. 

Not too bad.

We made it up to the mountain in time for sunset. Any sunset is great. But, from a photography point of view, Saturday's was ho-hum. 

The gnats were out in force swarming around us despite a pretty stiff breeze. I was glad I brought a sweatshirt. It was cool. And pretty soon, it was damp enough to fog up the little window for my camera settings. 

Patience is king when it comes to photography.

We hung out and waited for full dark and worked on getting our focus right. Once it's dark, it's so hard to find focus. It's impossible with the autofocus. I got focused on something far away while it was still light and then turned my focus to manual so the autofocus wouldn't throw me out of whack. 

Then I hoped for the best.

And...yeah!

I got some photos of the Milky Way! I think we need to find somewhere even darker. There was a pesky red blinking light - maybe to warn airplanes? I don't know. It was annoying though. 

We didn't see a lot of meteors, but I did catch a few. I think we would have had to stay out much later.

I liked the graffiti all over the rocks. It was a little graffiti mountain. 

Once again I was so grateful for Lauren being able to stay awake to drive. We didn't get home until almost 2:30 am. I was talking to keep us both awake, but I kept finding myself nodding off. 

I didn't get a lot of sleep this weekend, but I sure had fun!

I hope you had a great weekend too!

See you between the raindrops!

xoxo,
Susan