Capturing the Perseids

After a very short 2 hours light sleep, from 21.30 until 23:45 yesterday evening I went out of bed for, what should be an exciting trip to Aekingerzand. Together with Ron and Herman I'm going to capture the falling stars during the night.
Just before midnight I was ready, and Annemarie, the boys and Toby had all went to bed. I had a small hour to spend, so I watched part of another episode of Vikings on Netflix.

At 00:50 I left home to pick up Ron (agent B) in Ten Boer. As agreed, he was waiting at the busstop near his house. 50 minutes later we met agent C, Herman, who was already waiting for us at the very dark parking in the woods of Aekingerzand.

We saw a few more cars parked there, so we thought we wouldn't be all alone tonight. More idiots would spent the entire night outside to watch the shooting stars. As we entered the nature reserve, we indeed saw more people (with cars even), some with rather strange equipment on them, such as white sheets with lamps. We passed them, said hello and walked on. Nobdy followed, and soon it was just the three of us, in the pitchblack nature, under a sky filled with stars. Luckily Herman brought his super bright head torch. Together with Rons navigation on his iphone we easily found our route.

After a 25 minutes walk we arrived at the Grenspoel, a small lake at the border of the provinces Drenthe and Frisia. No sounds at all, expect every now and then soft plashes of an occasional frog that went skinny dipping in the lake. We all searched our spots and compositions and soon the show started. 

I found it rather difficult to handle my camera in the dark and find the right settings and composition. But after a while I'd figured it all out and started to expose. Soon the first Perseids appeared. Yes!

The photo above is a composite of several photos, taken shortly after each other. It now shows 4 shooting stars over a period of, I think 10 minutes. Divided in 20 second exposures each.

Around 04:30 the sky became too bright to continue shooting, so we started our walk back to the car. After 20 minutes we were back at the carpark. We then read the sign at the entrance of the nature reserve, telling us that entrance was prohibited from sunset until sunrise. Oops.

Just after  06:00 am I dropped Agent B off near his home, and drove home. At 06:18 I stepped into my own bed and slept until 10:30.
Shower- and coffee time.

A quiet Sunday followed. I imported my photos, and must confess that I was a bit disappointed seeing them. They just didn't show what I saw during the night. But after a bit of tweaking and processing I managed to get an acceptable result. Did I?

As more often is the case with other shoots, I need to set these photos aside for a while, and take another look at them in a few days/weeks. Processing them is a lot easier then, with better endresults.

Anyways, the experience out there last night was great! Magical. And memories do not have to be processed.