If you read my last post, you know that my recent trip to west Texas was not that great. It was a seven day adventure that produced one single image, the one seen above. Many things went wrong, but when you have lemons, you make lemonade. It’s not the best, but I learned from my mistakes. Don’t trust your equipment. Make sure it’s working properly before setting out. Shoot even if it’s cloudy. The clouds were passing through but you can’t see it in the image. Make sure the foreground shots are sharply focused and properly exposed. This is a composite of around 300 images shot throughout the night. The foreground was shot during the blue hour and blended with the stack of star images to create this star trail photograph. I didn’t think I had anything to work with and the whole trip was a wasted effort because the interval time between shots was too long. The camera wasn’t set properly and I didn’t realize it until the next day when I got a chance to look at the images. When I got home, I edited the images and stacked them anyway not expecting it to look good at all. It wasn’t as bad as I had expected. It’s not perfect by any means but I like it enough to feel satisfied. I had hoped for so much more but accepted so much less. I hope to do better next time. Just keep trying. It’s bound to fall into place at some point. Be happy with your achievements, even if it didn’t hit the mark. You can try again, and again if necessary. I will keep trying. When I finally reach my mark, I think I shall raise the bar so that I am continuously challenged. Tonight is supposed to be clear and cold with the new moon in less than a week so I think I will go out and try again. It’s not the truly dark skies of Big Bend here in the east Texas piney woods, but it’s just outside my back door and it’s dark enough. Thanks for visiting. Just keep swimming.