star trials

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“Oh my God, it’s getting light out!”

I awoke with the urgency and speed of a person who just realized the cabin was on fire. It wasn’t.

“Damn,” I cursed as I jumped into my boots and stumbled sideways through the door while pulling on my coat.

“What happened to the alarm?” I thought, as I braved the sub freezing morning air.

I ran for about 30 seconds onto the frozen lake before I realized it was a futile effort. I caught my breath and slowed to a walk. Yes, the sky was fairly bright now. Even the western horizon was fully illuminated. A few minutes later, around the corner in the middle of a small bay, I reached my destination. There, with it’s neck cranked skyward stood my tripod and camera that I had set up the night before. I closed the shutter and shook my head. Replacing the lens cap I took 3 more fast blank exposures. I knew that an extremely overexposed frame also exposed the film surrounding it inside the camera. I grabbed my set-up, hoisted it over my shoulder and headed back to the cabin.

I had done everything right; I had checked the weather for clear skies, no moon, and was well away from the city and light pollution. It had helped that I was in the middle of nowhere, as leaving expensive camera equipment unattended for hours at a time is not something that I would recommend in most locations. I had taped the lens with focus on infinity and the aperture wide open to stop my fumble fingers from inadvertently moving the focusing or aperture rings while setting up in the dark. I was using an old manual Nikon FE camera so batteries weren’t an issue. All this was no consolation as I stoked the fire and crawled back into bed. I’ll try again tomorrow. This time I’ll make sure the alarm clock is on AM instead of PM. Learn from your mistakes.

The next night I repeated the ritual of the previous evening, setting out onto the crunching snow at 11pm to the spot I had picked out previously. I turned off my flashlight. It was dark. Very dark. With no moon out, the Milky Way looked like a giant painting. I thought it was sad that most of the world’s population would never see the stars like this. Using the North Star as my guide, I framed and pre-visualized the image I would get with the trees below and the sky spinning around the North Star. After tripping and locking the shutter, I turned towards the cabin and switched on my flashlight to find my way back.

This time, when I was awakened by the alarm five hours later, it was still dark. I took my time, but as I stepped across the snow-covered ice, I realized that my flashlight might put a nasty lens flare on the film if it shone into the lens. I turned it off and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. When I reached the spot where I remembered leaving the camera, a sense of panic returned as I did a 360 and my camera and tripod were nowhere in sight. I knew there were other cabins scattered around the lake. Perhaps someone had come across the set-up and couldn’t believe anyone would leave a perfectly good camera out there all alone on the ice. I couldn’t turn my flashlight on. I knew that if I did, the first thing it would illuminate would be my lens pointed directly at me 20 feet away.

It took a good 5 minutes of frantic criss-cross spiral searching to finally locate my tripod. I’m sure the snow tracks I left resembled a web from a spider on crack when viewed from above. I returned home happy with the knowledge that my gear wasn’t stolen, I had got the shot and I could go back to sleep for a few more hours. Isn’t life great.

Bridge Lake, BC. Nikkor 20mm 3.5 lens, Nikon FE, 5 hours @ F3.5

You can find this image in my gallery under scenics-travel>> scenics>> star trails.