Perseid Party

Perseid Party - August 11th and 12th, 2012 from Travis Novitsky on Vimeo.

Here is my timelapse video from our night of watching the Perseid meteor shower.  This video was made from roughly 1,482 individual photos taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera and Canon EF 17-40mm lens. Exposure times for the individual photos were all 30 seconds at an aperture of f4 and an ISO of 6400. I used QuickTime 7 Pro to stitch all the photos into a video, then edited the video (added titles, credits and music) using iMovie on my iMac.

Fire Tower and the Milky Way Galaxy

My favorite shot from this weekend :-) This photo was taken while we were watching the Perseid meteor shower. My camera had been set up doing a sequence of images for a timelapse video when I noticed the nice alignment of the Milky Way between the fire tower and these trees. I had to take a break from shooting the timelapse sequence in order to capture this photo before the Milky Way moved too far to the west. Sure was a beautiful night for photographing the Milky Way.

Below: A couple more shots from the weekend.


 

Lily Pad Paradise

Here's a recent shot from a paddling outing on the Brule River and Northern Light Lake along the Gunflint Trail in northeast Minnesota.  This is such a beautiful location to spend the day paddling.  You start out paddling downstream along the Brule River and eventually the river empties into Northern Light Lake.  This shot was taken near where the river meets the lake.  Where the two waters meet there are lily pads everywhere.  For the past few years I've been trying to get a nice shot of lily pads with a nice sky full of summer clouds.  This is my favorite attempt so far at this type of shot. 

Evening Thundercloud

We sure have had a lot of cool clouds filling our skies lately. This one was captured while I was kayaking the Pigeon River recently. I could hear thunder off in the distance but I never did get rained on while I was out there.

Below: Another one that I captured the same evening along the river.

Engagement Day!

Above Image: "Where the Lake becomes the River" - Near the Gunflint Trail in northeast Minnesota, the Brule River resumes its journey toward Lake Superior after flowing through Northern Light Lake.

Last night, under the light of an incredibly surreal moonlit and lightning-filled sky over Lake Superior, I asked the woman I love to marry me. And she said YES! I feel like I'm floating on air today :-)

So, Jessica and I are now officially engaged :-) And what do we do to celebrate our engagement day? We spend it outside, of course! We went paddling on the Brule River and Northern Light Lake along the Gunflint Trail in Northeast Minnesota. It sure was a beautiful day!



Above: Jessica getting lost in the grass where the Brule River flows into Northern Light Lake



Above: The clouds and lily pads were awesome.



Above: It was loads of fun paddling through these reeds.  Very interesting to watch them glide magically out of the way as the bow of the kayak nudged them to the side. 



Above: Goofing off in the tall grass.

Leaning Tree over the Pigeon River

 















Yesterday I brought the kayak and went for an evening paddle on the Pigeon River in search of Moose. I did not see any Moose while I was on the river (although I did see a nice young bull in the dark on the drive home). What I did see, however, were several Beaver and some of the nicest clouds I've ever seen over the river. When I came upon this leaning Tamarack tree I knew I had to try and photograph the scene with the tree and the clouds overhead. Even though I didn't come home with any Moose photographs, I did come home with the memory of another beautiful evening spent on the river.

Summer Storm Cloud

Yesterday while harvesting some cucumbers from our plot in the community garden this really cool cloud drifted by overhead. I thought for sure it was going to drop at least a little bit of rain on us, but it passed us by without getting us wet. Clouds are awesome and I love how they always have the potential of making you stare at the sky in disbelief at what your eyes are seeing.