045/365

Chasing Aurora

There was an incredible display of the Aurora lights last night.  My camera was acting funny so I missed some really good images, but I'm happy with what I got.

328/365

Christmas Parade

Every year Abilene holds their Christmas Parade the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.  This was huge one.  It lasted, from the first entry to the last, about 1 hour and 50 minutes.  It was very mild that night and there were a lot of people still there for the entire parade.

It's brutal taking pics with a real camera in the dark.  After about 7 tries, I put the camera away and just watched the parade. This is the only image I took that was even remotely worth posting.  I always wonder why the event planners think the parade is better in the dark.  

My heart is grateful for:

the moderate weather after the brutal summer we had

2/365

Almost A Full Moon

While looking at the sky for the Aurora Borealis, I turned toward the south and saw this beautiful sight.  I noticed the moon being ⅔ full and was surprised at how quickly the moon waxes and wanes.  

Just a few days ago, Dec 29th, the moon was only ½ full.

Tonight the sky was cloudless and the stars were bright.   The trees are lit by some motion lights in the driveway.  This is another image taken with my phone camera. I'm so impressed with the quality of the images.  That doesn't mean I'll give up my grown-up camera, but there's a saying in photographic circles:

"The best camera you have is the one you have with you". 

(the double watermark was an accident and it's late and I didn't feel like doing the image over)

23/365   Night Scene

I very recently got a new phone.  

During all the times I've visited Fairbanks I've never seen the Northern Lights.  I hope to see them this trip, so tonight I went outside around 10:45 pm (it gets pitch dark around 4 pm during the winter).  There were no "lights" then, probably because of the heavy cloud cover, but I wanted to try the phone camera in the dark to see how it well it photographed at night.  

This is looking south.  It's amazing.  The image can't be blown up too large because it would be too grainy, but what a great job it does for small pics.