As it turns out, neither Willie nor I had spent much time in Yosemite high country and knowing that August would be ideal for milky way, meteor showers, and stormy sunsets, we decided to head to Yosemite for a long weekend.
Saturday night/Sunday morning was supposed to be the time when the Perseid Meteor Shower would be most fireballing through the sky. Willie and I decided to head to Mono Lake to witness the meteor shower with the beautiful Tufa formations as a foreground. We had just spent the evening hiking 9 miles to Cathedral Lakes and back and were extremely exhausted when we arrived at the South Tufas of Mono Lake. We found a nice spot on the beach where we could put some Tufas in our frame, pointed the camera towards the north-east and exposed shot after shot hoping we would capture some meteors It was quite the thrill to watch hundreds of meteors flash before our eyes. Of course my camera only caught 14 of them. Ive placed all 14 images onto this one image to show you what we witnessed After about 45 minutes we were too sleepy to stay any longer and we packed it up, and went to bed.
I rented the Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 lens for this weekend and boy did it perform well. I found that I had to set the camera to ISO 3200 at f/1.4 to f/1.8 for 15 seconds to get the meteors to show up. Anything less sensitive and the camera wouldnt capture the meteor. After each exposure I would check for a meteor and if I didnt find one, would immediately delete the image; made things quite a bit easier when I got home and went to blend them all together
Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24mm f/1.4G ED
24mm, f1.4, 15 sec, ISO 3200
14 images blended together in Photoshop CS6
