At first, I didn't want to photograph it.
I've had some pretty bad luck in the past, standing out in the middle of fields, camera pointed skyward, trying to capture celestial bodies. The aurora borealis; countless meteor showers; the Milky Way.
I mean, I know how to take pictures of the sky at night. And, over the years, I've had varied success. And I'm quite good at capturing images of the moon. But it seems that when particular cosmic events come along, I somehow come away empty-handed or with images that I'm less than pleased with.
My photography meetup group posted a meeting last Saturday, to gather at Shirley's Bay Park, where Rifle Road ends at the Ottawa River, to get shots of the NEOWISE Comet (NEOWISE stands for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, NASA's space telescope that discovered this comet in March of this year). I was tempted to join my fellow photographers, but after a day on the St. Lawrence River, kayaking around the 1,000 Islands off Gananoque, I was too tired to go. I had also convinced myself that I was going to screw up taking the photo.
On Tuesday, when my photography group again announced another meetup to capture the comet, I thought, what the hell: it was a nice evening. I hadn't been to Shirley's Bay Park since the late 80s, when I took some sunset images with coloured filters. It was time to revisit this west-end part of the Ottawa River, across from Aylmer, Québec.
At the very least, I'd get some dusk and blue-hour images of the Ottawa River.
I arrived just after 9:00 and found the parking lot packed. Lots of people had come out to this park to enjoy a barbecue dinner, to watch the sunset, or just to hang out where the view of the Gatineau Hills from across the river is gorgeous. I managed to find one of the last available parking spots, and got my equipment out of the trunk.
While there were a lot of people on this rocky shore, groups were keeping their distance from one another. I scoped the area for fellow photographers and saw a small group setting up their tripods near the water. These people were not social-distancing, so I told myself that I didn't want to be with them. I saw what appeared to be a father and son, standing alone with their tripods, cameras faced skyward, so I approached them and asked if they were with the photography group.
They said no.
I saw a woman in her mid to late 60s with a tripod, also facing to the evening sky. She was alone, sitting on a small folding chair, and so I approached her and asked her the same question. Again, her answer was no, but she pointed to the cluster of other photographers, their number growing.
"If that's them," I said to her, "no thanks." I moved about 20 or so feet away from the woman and set up my tripod.
Because it was less than a half hour after sunset, there was still plenty of peach-coloured sky on the horizon and so I shot a few photos. I wasn't going to go home empty-handed. I saw that just over the treeline on the Québec side of the river, clouds had gathered and were moving slowly, despite the steady breeze that was mercifully keeping the mosquitoes to a minimum. Directly overhead, wisps of cirrus clouds were also threatening to obstruct the night sky.
I looked at my watch: it was a quarter past the hour. I knew that the comet would be at its peak brightness between 10:00 and 10:30. I told myself that if the clouds were still around at 10, I'd pack up and call it a night.
As light faded, many people began to pack up and head out. As I had guessed, most were here to see the sunset. But some people, without cameras beyond smartphones, remained. Perhaps they were here to try and glimpse the comet with their naked eyes.
My eyes scanned the sky, through the gaps in the clouds. I could count a few stars, making themselves visible as the darkness grew. In the area where I expected to see the comet, clouds still moved across the sky, but as 10:00 came, the clouds seemed to dissipate, and so I readied my camera.
When I thought I saw a faint trail of light, I turned my D750 toward it with my telephoto lens set to 70mm. As soon as I had the object in my frame, I zoomed to 300mm.
It was a small vapour trail, left by some long-gone aircraft.
At precisely 10:15, I saw a tiny blur of light just below the Big Dipper. Again, setting my lens to its widest field of view, I located the object in my viewfinder. Even at 70mm, I knew I had the comet. I zoomed to 300mm and shot. My exposure was set to four seconds at f/8, with ISO at 800. The comet was a decent size in the frame but my exposure was a little low, the comet faint but visible. The tail was barely visible.
Over the next 15 minutes, I played with my exposure settings, firing off a total of 28 shots. By 10:30, I was packing up and heading home.
Looking at the photos, once home, I was pretty happy with the results. Though some of my exposures were a bit too long, making the surrounding stars appear like streaks in the night sky, the comet itself looked pretty good. I even managed to capture an image as a satellite, which I could not see with the naked eye, crossed the comet's path.
My favourite shot of the bunch was taken at an exposure of four seconds at f/8, but with an ISO of 10,000. The surrounding stars show a bit of motion but the comet is clear. The sky was a bit darker, having been shot at 10:27.
I may have blown off my photo group that evening and left myself to my own devices for capturing this comet, but my results renewed my faith in my ability to capture a celestial body in the night sky. In the past, I've sometimes blamed my equipment: my Nikon D80 wasn't robust enough; my D7200 had too many features and I didn't fully understand them. Those statements may have been true with the D80, but I was blaming the D7200 for my own failings.
The D750 is the most-advanced camera that I've ever had but it still came down to my manual settings and experience. The difference this time is that I had a little more faith in myself.
Happy Friday!
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