Come View the Geminid Meteor Shower, and a New Topaz Plug-In

Geminid Meteor Shower

Saturday evening, December 13, right now the weather forecast shows only partly cloudy conditions, hopefully it will allow good viewing of the Geminid meteor shower.  I will be at the Stone Barn of Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary from 6 PM until midnight.  Everyone is welcome to come and learn how to photograph not only the stars but the meteor shower.  The stone barn location gives us bathrooms, along with a kitchen so we can have water to drink or make hot drinks.  Dress appropriately, equipment needed is a camera with a wide-angle lens, a sturdy tripod, and intervolometer unless your camera is equipped with one, extra cards and batteries for the camera.

The Geminid meteor shower is not caused by a comet but is residue from an asteroid and usually has many bright yellow meteors.  The best view will be looking toward the south and many more meteors will occur after midnight, but a last quarter moon will be rising around midnight, which will decrease the viewing of some of the meteors.

Geminid Meteor Shower

Geminid Meteor Shower

To Sanctuary Entrance at Stone Barn Farm
From Interstate 195, in Westport, take Exit 10 (Rt 88 South). Follow Route 88 for 7.2 miles through three lights to intersection with Hixbridge Rd at 4th light. Turn left onto Hixbridge Rd and proceed 1.5 miles to stop sign at Pine Hill Rd and Horseneck Rd. Turn right onto Horseneck Rd. Proceed 3.3 miles to corner with East Horseneck Rd and turn left. Stone Barn Farm entrance will be 0.4 miles further on your right at 786 E. Horseneck Rd. in Dartmouth.

Let's end 2014 with glowing colors! From December 9th through December 31st, Topaz is running a promotion on their newest product: Topaz Glow.

Glow can be used as a stand-alone or a plugin to transform your photos from dull to dazzling. Containing more than 70 unconventional and quirky filters, you can infuse your images with neon, graphic, liquid and other electrifying effects.

The technology behind Glow seeks out the unexplored lines and patterns in your images and illuminates them.

Original

Process with Glow

Original

Process with Glow

YouTube Video Link: http://youtu.be/y2JsbFxPZ2g

Please utilize the coupon code 'INTROGLOW' so you can take advantage of the introductory price of $49.99 (regularly $69.99). You can link directly to the Glow product page with this URL:
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A Fun Evening

Sunset over Westport Harbor

Last evening, my grandson and I first went to Westport to photograph the sunset over the harbor.  After checking where the sun was going to set, I chose the location at the boat ramp, next to the Back Eddy.  We set up our cameras and focused on the sunset.  Suddenly we noticed in front of us on the rocks, a Green Heron.  Since the green heron did not seem afraid of us, we went back to the car and got long lenses.  We photographed the green Heron, and various poses in between photographing the sunset.

Green Heron

Green Heron

I experimented with a long exposure, utilizing a 10 X the neutral density filter.  First, I set up my scene and checked my camera settings without the neutral density filter on the lens.  I consulted a chart did see what time I should use and reading the chart and told me four seconds.  I held the neutral density filter in front of the lens, since I did not have the right step-up ring for the lens to accommodate the filter.  I was able to smooth out the water almost completely, will have to experiment some more.

Sunset

Once we finished with sunset, we traveled down to the Stone Barn Farm, hoping to photograph the Milky Way and fireflies.  As it got darker, the fireflies came out and I set up the camera to photograph the fireflies utilizing the same type settings as I would for star photography.  I then set the camera to take interval time pictures.  On the computer, I checked the pictures and selected those that had lights from the fireflies.  The one thing that I should have done first was either to take one picture and lightpaint the area or take a picture of that the area I was photographing so it would show more detail.  Since I did neither one of these I had adjust one of the sequence photos to lighten up the background.  The only problem was there was more noise that I liked and though I cleaned the noise up, it was not as good as I'd like it to be.  I then selected all the pictures that I wanted and open them in Photoshop as layers.  Then selected all layers that had the firefly lights in them, and chose lighten mode.  So here is the result.

Fireflies

As regards to the Milky Way, the first problem was there were numerous clouds in the sky, which tended to obscure the very white areas of the Milky Way.  Thankfully, the clouds cleared and I was able to get a decent picture of the Milky Way, which also included a small meteor in the left upper corner.

The Milky Way

I then took some pictures of the stars and clouds over the Fernandez house and also did a 20 minute star trail by the stone barn.

Stars and clouds over Fernandez house

Startrails by the stone barn

Remember, Topaz is running a 50% promotion on Topaz Adjust until August 31.  Adjust is an image enhancement plug-in designed to make your photos pop. The 50% coupon code is: augadjust.  You can link directly to the Adjust product page with this URL:
http://www.topazlabs.com/aff/idevaffiliate.php?id=850&url=http://www.topazlabs.com/adjust