One from October, Two from November

The first weekend of October, my wife and I visited the Eastern Sierra (Hwy 395 corridor) with a small photo group from our church.  The main purpose of this trip was fall color, but we were about a week too early for the best color.  Also, the Inyo National Forest, where many of the best spots are located, was closed due to smoke from the Creek Fire, which burned nearly 400,000 acres in Fresno and Madera Counties on the west side of the Sierra (unfortunately, one member of our group lost her home in Shaver Lake a couple weeks before the trip).  The secondary purpose of this trip was visiting the Alabama Hills (just outside of Lone Pine) for sunset/moonrise one night and sunrise/moonset the next morning.

Here is an 18-second exposure of Boot Arch (artificially lit) and the night sky to the south.

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And here is an annotated version of the same image.

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Then, for Thanksgiving, we rented a house in Shaver Lake for the family: my wife and me, our three kids, their spouses, and all six grandkids.  When grandchild #1 was born twelve years ago, we started a tradition to rent a place in Shaver to celebrate years in which we had a grandchild.  We got out of sync because four years ago we had grandkids #4 and #5, schedules the last couple years didn't work out, so this year was for celebrating #5.  We had #6 earlier this year, so in a couple years we will do this again.  (BTW, the Creek Fire burned parts of the town and surrounding developments, but other parts were undamaged.  The water system was back up and running, but the water is not potable yet so we brought bottled water for drinking.)

The skies were clear, cold, and dry, so it was time to do a couple star trails from the balcony off the master bedroom.  Here is a 1h40m star trail (Olympus E-M1 Mk III, 8-mm f/1.8 fisheye @ f/4.0, focused using StarryAF feature, LiveComp blend of 200 x 30s exposures).

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The next night I had time for a longer star trail image, this time 4h00m (Olympus E-M1 Mk III, 4-mm Laowa f/2.8 circular fisheye @ f/4.0, manual focus, LiveComp blend of 480 x 30s exposures).  The big bright blob is the Moon peeking over the eave of the rental house.

BTW, even after sitting outside for four hours in low 40s to high 30s temperatures, there was no dew on the lens, the camera, or the tripod.  The air was even too dry for my sinuses.  

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