Welcome to June,Mainers and friends.It's warm out there! I like the heat but it does making working a bit of an extra struggle.That's ok though,sure beats sub zero.

 

Well I didn't take much time to try and figure out a place to go camp and hike this weekend.Way to worn out after work yesterday to head out anyway.That and the weather wasn't great last night either.Now to figure out where to go and what to do for tonight.I want to get some killer night shots in,now that it's June.Like one of the best months for astrophotography.I haven't been through a summer yet with my new camera gear.I've gotten some great experience in though,going across the southern states and out to Cali and back,shooting at all the parks and monuments,so I have "decent" expectations of my abilities now,to shoot some great milky way shots.Can't wait!

 

Alright.I think I found something cool with dark skies to shoot tonight.I think I'm gunna need to go grab lunch and a nap before heading out if I'll be shooting for a few hours tonight.Man am I beat! That humidity pushed up from Florida killed me while working this week.Took the life right out of me.I'll never be able to make it through the night without some extra rest first lol.Wahoo,the milky way awaits!

Oh the moon rises at 11:30.I have a smaller window that I thought still.It will get latter as the month goes along.Well anyway,nap time.

 

Good afternoon Mainers.OK I'm fairly sure I captured our galaxy last night.It's still a bit early for being very vibrant though.It sure was cool capturing it much lower in the sky than in winter.I think I got some ocean in the foreground too.Took a few pics.Now to stitch a few together,post possess and I'll post up what I got.Man,a couple weeks from now the Milky way should really be vibrant and I'll have hours to get some cool shots.Anywho,I'll be a couple hours working on 'em.

Edit; Oh yeah.I got just what I thought I got.I hope I can process these good enough to do them justice.I think I'll follow along with another youtube vid.These are the first shots where it looked like I captured color in the milky way right in the cam......sure enough.

Double edit.OK yeah,definitely my best Milky way shot so far.I think you guys will like it alright.Stay tuned to the Welcome to Maine,the way life should be thread.It's a coming.

 

Good morning Maine.Well this rain is greatly needed even if it does slow things down a touch.It was getting pretty dry out there.I think I'll brave the great outdoors lol and put a rain coat on eventually here.Supposed to lighten up after noon so.Getting some office work done anyway.Always nice to catch up.
Have a good day guys.

 

Rain sure is greening everything up. Love these temps in the 50's, sure it won't stay around for long.

 

Yeah one extreme to the other.Too muggy,early in the season due to the storm down south,now cold lol.I'm ready for some mild 80's.
Good morning Maine.

 

Good morning Maine.Hope everyone has a good weekend.I still gotta hunt for a camping spot.Hopefully clear skies tonight for shooting some stars.

 

Good afternoon Maine.I just posted up a new adventure back over to Moosehead.I did see a big moose but no pic.He had just crossed the road in front of me and I saw his big hind quarters going into the woods.Sure glad he passed well advance in front of me at night.Scary.You hit one of those with a car and your done for.I kept it at 45 even though it was a 55mph zone after that lol.
Anyway I capture a stunning Milky Way rainbow.It's all up in the welcome to Maine thread.Enjoy! Hope you guys are enjoying June.Lots of solitude still.The boys from Massachusetts aren't up here in heard's yet. Good to see 'em when they come though.A whole lot of seasonal Maine business owners count on them bringing up some "real money" here.We have crumbs to what those guys bring in a year down there.Need 'em to come spread the wealth.

 

Good evening Maine.Well for a while now I've wanted to visit Canada from time to time,like I used too back before you needed anything other than just ID.
I called up my tribal council to see if they offered us Indian ID cards that would be accepted but they don't.Though they said they're working on it.Considering Canada is ancestral land of ours,it's too bad we have to pay for passport(card) to visit.Oh well such is life of an NDN I guess lol.



So anyway,I finally went to the court house and got myself a passport card so I can re-visit Canada.I want to go and visit like I never have.Back 15 or 20 or so plus years ago I would just drive through just an hour or so from Maine and site see but not really go anywhere and do anything.I see some great national parks within a driving distance from Maine.
Kejimkujik is rich in my tribes history.I'm really looking forward to this one.Anyway,they told me it will take a month or so until my card comes so I'll just be camping and hiking in Maine until then,then I'll go over and explore on a few long weekends this summer....knock on wood.

Now it's time to search for some night skies to shoot and a place to camp for the night.I haven't a clue which direction I'm headed for the weekend yet.
I haven't been to the White Mountain national forest yet...part is in Maine too...I know,how crazy right? I just got my new tripod head for multi layer panorama shooting so I don't want to go there for tonight,cus I don't want my first experience with it,picking up more Portland light pollution than Milky Way.So I'll put this off yet again lol.I dunno,so much still to see.It will take me a lifetime to see Maine.I'll find someplace interesting.

Here's a guy putting together the head I just got.

This thing is quality! For about $55 on amazon.I guess real high end brands run several hundred or something silly.Crazy.I don't need that.It does come with firm/hard grease inside like the reviewers claim.It spins pretty firm.For what I'm doing,it's perfect.I'm not trying to capture video in a smooth fashion or anything.Just moving and clicking in position so I think it's perfect as is for astrophotography so I'm not going to take it apart and re-grease it or anything.It's not that firm.Can't wait to try it out.I have to shoot horizontally,so I may need to pan 3 times to get enough height,we'll see.
Anyway enough rambling from me.Hope everyone has a great weekend! Keep Maine beautiful.....Oh hmm.There's an idea.I haven't been up to Baxter in a while......hmm.Not the best place on late notice with their hassle of a reservation system though,though I suppose that's just to climb the mountain,I dunno too late for that now I think...Well take care.I'll see ya out there somewhere.

Update:
OK now that it's 9pm I'm set to go! I got a good weekend planned ahead now! This should all be very,very good.Mostly all new places.Have a good weekend guys! See ya Sunday evening with hopefully some more god pics.Should be about shooting time by the time I get there and setup.Wish me clear skies!

 

Good evening Maine.Hope everyone is having an awesome Maine weekend.Guys,I'm stitching and processing a triple row Milky Way panorama! 40! Yes lol forty pics combined.I have my new to me (refurb) desktop I just picked up from amazon working on it right now.The old Pentium D dual core didn't stand a chance.I have a 3rd gen i7 now with 12 gigs of ram. It preview stitched successfully and looked amazing! So apparently I worked the new gimbal head correctly on my first time out!
I'm working my i7 desktop so hard I have to use my laptop to hang out here.Maybe I should grab another 4 gig stick for it.It has three,4 gig sticks now with an empty slot........but how often do I need to work it this hard I suppose.
So anyway I'll have up a cool hiking and camping Maine adventure in the welcome to Maine thread in a few hours.If I take my time to process this baby,it should be my best night shot of all time,by a landslide.
I'm glad I headed out Friday night to shot cus it was perfect! Last night way a bust.Too cloudy.I already know for 100% I have to head back up to Rockwood and shoot again over Moosehead with this new tripod head.I have a cool treat planned for next weekend already though.

 

Oh man what a time I'm having lol.I kept running out of hdd space on my C drive! I had to move my windows temp folder to a large partition on another hdd.Apparently this panorama needs many,many gigs of temp space.Way more than the spare 30+ gigs I have still open on drive C.
Lightroom has over 300 gigs to play with now,so we'll see how it likes that.What should of taken 20 mins is taking hours lol.Oh well,good to have temp folder off C anyway probably and I moved virtual memory pagfile to a secondary hdd and partition too.Now I think I have my new pc setup to breathe.
I hope this thing stitches! I'm getting anxious now.

 

Holy crap.It took the pc a couple hours but it stitched together billions of stars lol.I have my best night sky shot to date.No close second.I'll have it up in a bit.I hope I can upload it.It's massive!
25,173x8,692 @108 MB! 4 row panorama @ 10 pics per row for 40 total images.
I dunno if there's an imagining host site that's going to allow this.I'm afraid I'll need to resize it.
Looks like the site I use will resize automatically if it's too large....Well I have it uploading so we'll see how it turns out.

Good morning Maine.Rained out today,so I'll work on getting the weekends trip up.


Edit; Oh they just kill when they resize.I mean you can see it but it's not even 1 mb lol so there's no zooming at all.I'll have to resize it myself I guess.
Oh wait a second.They aren't hosting my other Milky Way shot as a big file size either.Well crap.I'm probably just as well uploading them directly here then if I have no way to upload uncompresed/resized anyway.

 

Thursday, June 21, is Native American Veterans Day in Maine, and an event celebrating the role of Native American veterans will be held at 6 p.m. at 1 Down St., Indian Island. All are welcome. One Down St. is the home of much-decorated Penobscot veteran Charles Norman Shay, and the site of a tipi museum commemorating his experiences as a member of the Big Red One on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The site will now include a kiosk and new artwork by noted Penobscot artist Tim Shay, his nephew, to be unveiled at this ceremony.

Native Americans have served in the U.S. Armed Forces in every major military conflict since the Revolutionary War and in greater numbers per capita than any other ethnic group, according to The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. All are welcome to Indian Island to attend this event honoring those who served, and to visit the museum and installation of maps, awards and artwork.


Maine's Native American veterans to be celebrated on June 21

 

Good evening Maine.So no Milky Way shooting this coming weekend. The moon is going to be out all through astronomical twilight (the darkest time of night). Looks like the moon phase is going to mess me up for the rest of the month too.
I'm still glowing about that quadruple row of 10 Milky Way panorama I shot last Friday night though.Man,I'm starting to impress myself lol.It's in the Welcome to Maine thread but just in case anyone missed it here it is again for good measure.Not that I'm gloating or anything.


Acadia National Park,Schoodic Loop Rd,Winter Harbor,Maine
Nikon D3400 - Rokinon RK24MAF-N - 15 sec exposure - 3200 ISO - LLL (Low level lighting) - Four rows of ten for a total of forty images stitched together,make up this panorama - Processed using Lightroom

Forty freaking images.Can you believe that? This gimbal head is amazing.I dunno how I worked it so well right out of the gate either.Beginners luck? lol Nah I'm being a little modest I guess.I've had many hours of practice going out shooting from here to California last winter.....Sure it was winter so no real Milky Way shots but still,lots of practice mastering all the basics with the basic single row panorama's using just a ball head.With the new head it was just a matter off turning on "live view" and watching as I panned up to start my next row to get some overlap for the next sweep.
I've been going through my pics and looking back when I first started holy crap was I bad! So many pics I had to just delete,so out of focus and wrong settings. Takes a while to learn and practice this stuff,let me tell ya.Very fun though.

Though no astrophotography this weekend,I do have something pretty neat planned for this weekend just the same.Mums the word but it's gunna be pretty cool and different.I haven't done it before and it's a place I haven't been before either.Be sure to check the Welcome to Maine thread come Sunday evening.