Like many of you, 2024 was a year when I was all over the place! And on top of that I did all sorts of types of photography, so I tried to pick my best ones from each group. What I couldn't squeeze in was Street Photography, and I didn't include any video's. I have been working on my YouTube Channel, I have over 350 video's on there now. Video's are really time consuming to edit and process and post. So my trying to focus more on the video's I felt cut into my photography and the quality of my photography.
PS. Jameel asked a question about how many unprocessed images I have, so I plugged in my backup to count.
2024 - from January to September (Doesn't include Deep Space Astro, I have a separate backup drive for that)
14tb drive full - It's why it had to stop after September, I started a new one for the rest of the year.
1761 Folders
331,560 images
Fortunately I only process very few of my images or I would never get it down to 10 for the year.
#1 - White Sands New Mexico. Since the park is closed and locked at night, the best I could do was find a spot in an area that wasn't very popular with people, and then set up my NIkon D850 at sunset and set it to my typical Milky Way settings. I locked in the remote, I had an external battery running it all night, and when the Ranger came by my area to kick people out, I left it and hoped for the best.
#2 - International Forest of Cars in Nevada. It had been on my list for a while, and I finally got there. It was nice no one else was there, so I didn't have stray lights while doing my Milky Way timelapses. This is one of them.
#3 - Northern Lights in Wyoming. I was fortunate enough to be at my daughters house in Northern Colorado when the alert went off about the Aurora. Well, actually I had to go down to Denver for some activities for the grandkids, so I had driven south for that, and once that was done, I then had to drive North to meet up with Alisa at Glendo State Park in Wyoming. This is a spot had been to before, both scouting the lake, and capturing the Milky Way, so I thought it would be a great place to catch the Northern Lights. About 40 other people had the same idea, but it wasn't too bad. It was a little hard as I had 3 camera's spread out and going and there was a lot of people walking around. But with Alisa's help, we were able to keep an eye on our cameras. It wasn't a big deal as everyone was friendly, but you just never know.
#4 - Then in October I was up in Minnesota for Fall Colors, and another huge Northern Lights show went on. This was actually a multi-day event. I captured the Milky Way in 3 different spots. For this one, I had to drive 6 hours from Northern Minnesota where I had been photographing the Aurora with clear skies down to Southern Minnesota as the clouds shifted up north, and if I wanted to see it again I had to drive for it.
#5 - Yosemite. I was there to meet up with Oliver @BlackRockArt for the Horsetail Falls on Fire in February. And I captured it, and got a cool photo, but the one I look back on that I really like was this one which I captured with my Infrared camera, the Nikon D7100 converted to 590nm.
#6 - This next one was just last week at Knotts Berry Farm, the original theme park. It's in Southern California, and I have an annual pass to it. This was captured with my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I love my Nikon cameras, but my iPhone also gets lot's and lot's of use, so I wanted to pick one taken with it that I thought was really special. They have a working steam engine in Knotts, so it's cool to watch.
#7 - Comets have been pretty plentiful the last few years, this is one of them. Comet 12P Pons Brook
#8 - I finally got a chance to really capture a Solar Eclipse. I had reserved a campsite with Explore Scientific in Texas. As most of you will probably recall, the normally clear skies that are in Texas that time of year was all of a sudden going to be cloudy. Lot's of people changed their plans and went to other states that the forecast looked better. I decided to just keep my reservations and hope for the best. On the day of the eclipse it was cloudy, then the sky showed a bit, then cloudy again, then the sky and sun poked out again. It was the way the day went. The clouds opened up for for most of the beginning of the eclipse as the moon began to cover the sun, just before totallity though, like 2 mins before, the clouds covered the sun! Everyone around me groaned, but I stayed hopeful, and then the clouds cleared up just a bit at totality. It was clear for about 20 seconds, but then it covered it up again. But it was long enough that I was able to capture the eclipse. It felt like I just saw a miracle.
#9 - I also spent time doing Astro, it's another fun way for me to enjoy the night. Being a night owl, I enjoy being up. And in most cases I will have my telescope up capturing nebula's and galaxies while also having a couple of cameras up capturing timelapses of the Milky Way or the Night sky in general. It keeps me busy when I have 4 or 5 cameras running, but it's fun and I enjoy multi-tasking.
This is a close up of the Heart Nebula. Captured with the Askar FRA500 scope, AM5 mount, ASI2600mc Pro astro camera.
#10 - The Trifid nebula, one of my very favorites because of the color and detail it has. Captured with the Askar FRA500 scope, AM5 mount, ASI2600mc Pro astro camera.
PS. Jameel asked a question about how many unprocessed images I have, so I plugged in my backup to count.
2024 - from January to September (Doesn't include Deep Space Astro, I have a separate backup drive for that)
14tb drive full - It's why it had to stop after September, I started a new one for the rest of the year.
1761 Folders
331,560 images
Fortunately I only process very few of my images or I would never get it down to 10 for the year.
#1 - White Sands New Mexico. Since the park is closed and locked at night, the best I could do was find a spot in an area that wasn't very popular with people, and then set up my NIkon D850 at sunset and set it to my typical Milky Way settings. I locked in the remote, I had an external battery running it all night, and when the Ranger came by my area to kick people out, I left it and hoped for the best.
#2 - International Forest of Cars in Nevada. It had been on my list for a while, and I finally got there. It was nice no one else was there, so I didn't have stray lights while doing my Milky Way timelapses. This is one of them.
#3 - Northern Lights in Wyoming. I was fortunate enough to be at my daughters house in Northern Colorado when the alert went off about the Aurora. Well, actually I had to go down to Denver for some activities for the grandkids, so I had driven south for that, and once that was done, I then had to drive North to meet up with Alisa at Glendo State Park in Wyoming. This is a spot had been to before, both scouting the lake, and capturing the Milky Way, so I thought it would be a great place to catch the Northern Lights. About 40 other people had the same idea, but it wasn't too bad. It was a little hard as I had 3 camera's spread out and going and there was a lot of people walking around. But with Alisa's help, we were able to keep an eye on our cameras. It wasn't a big deal as everyone was friendly, but you just never know.
#4 - Then in October I was up in Minnesota for Fall Colors, and another huge Northern Lights show went on. This was actually a multi-day event. I captured the Milky Way in 3 different spots. For this one, I had to drive 6 hours from Northern Minnesota where I had been photographing the Aurora with clear skies down to Southern Minnesota as the clouds shifted up north, and if I wanted to see it again I had to drive for it.
#5 - Yosemite. I was there to meet up with Oliver @BlackRockArt for the Horsetail Falls on Fire in February. And I captured it, and got a cool photo, but the one I look back on that I really like was this one which I captured with my Infrared camera, the Nikon D7100 converted to 590nm.
#6 - This next one was just last week at Knotts Berry Farm, the original theme park. It's in Southern California, and I have an annual pass to it. This was captured with my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I love my Nikon cameras, but my iPhone also gets lot's and lot's of use, so I wanted to pick one taken with it that I thought was really special. They have a working steam engine in Knotts, so it's cool to watch.
#7 - Comets have been pretty plentiful the last few years, this is one of them. Comet 12P Pons Brook
#8 - I finally got a chance to really capture a Solar Eclipse. I had reserved a campsite with Explore Scientific in Texas. As most of you will probably recall, the normally clear skies that are in Texas that time of year was all of a sudden going to be cloudy. Lot's of people changed their plans and went to other states that the forecast looked better. I decided to just keep my reservations and hope for the best. On the day of the eclipse it was cloudy, then the sky showed a bit, then cloudy again, then the sky and sun poked out again. It was the way the day went. The clouds opened up for for most of the beginning of the eclipse as the moon began to cover the sun, just before totallity though, like 2 mins before, the clouds covered the sun! Everyone around me groaned, but I stayed hopeful, and then the clouds cleared up just a bit at totality. It was clear for about 20 seconds, but then it covered it up again. But it was long enough that I was able to capture the eclipse. It felt like I just saw a miracle.
#9 - I also spent time doing Astro, it's another fun way for me to enjoy the night. Being a night owl, I enjoy being up. And in most cases I will have my telescope up capturing nebula's and galaxies while also having a couple of cameras up capturing timelapses of the Milky Way or the Night sky in general. It keeps me busy when I have 4 or 5 cameras running, but it's fun and I enjoy multi-tasking.
This is a close up of the Heart Nebula. Captured with the Askar FRA500 scope, AM5 mount, ASI2600mc Pro astro camera.
#10 - The Trifid nebula, one of my very favorites because of the color and detail it has. Captured with the Askar FRA500 scope, AM5 mount, ASI2600mc Pro astro camera.
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