Sunday evening David England and I went up Dead Indian Road out of Ashland to photograph the Perseids Meteor shower.  Since we went straight up from a church priesthood meeting I was still in my church clothes and with out a jacket.  Fortunately, David’s son Nathan had a jacket I could borrow so I didn’t freeze. 

This photograph I obtained as someone was backing out their car and the brake lights were painting the trees a brilliant red.  I took several pictures over the evening with the trees highlighted this way.

I didn’t think I had to many shots with meteors in them until I got home and was going through the photos in lightroom. 

So a quick review on how to take photographs of the milky way or meteors.  The first requirement is a place to shoot with very little light pollution.  The lens you are going to want to use is your widest aperture prime lens, preferably a f/1.8 or larger.  Then set your camera’s ISO setting to 2000 to 3200 ISO,  so that the sensor will be very sensitive to the dim light of the stars.  The shutter speed needs to be less than 30 seconds to avoid star trails, this is the blurring of the stars due to the earth’s rotation.  I find a shutter speed between 20 and 25 seconds to be about right for my taste.

I love this shot of the milky way showing the colors.

This was a fun evening to lay out under the stars and take photographs of the night sky.  What made taking photographs over and over of the same section of sky hoping to capture a meteor was the interval photography ability.  I just set it up to take 50  20 sec exposure shots every 30 seconds.  This way I could just sit back and relax while the camera did the work!

Here is the rest of the shots enjoy and feel free to comment below on your own meteor photography adventures.