I recently had the good fortune to spend a week in Banff attending the 2014 International Snow Science Workshop. The conference was an excellent mix of snow science researchers, practitioners, and industry members and covered a lot of ground including snow mechanics, materials properties, human factors, and of course plenty of time for networking.
While in Banff I swapped out a night of networking in favour of astro photography. One of my favourite things about doing night shoots is that by their very nature they force me to slow down. I have found that it takes at least 30min of open exposure to time to get a star-trails image that I’m happy with, any less doesn’t do it, and this is 30min of slow, outdoor, time that I wouldn’t otherwise take. Unfortunately, the night I chose had a few clouds blow in on me and I ended up cutting the session short. I think the images still worked out, and I’d like to go back again for another try.
Since the clouds were covering Castle Mountain I re-oriented and tried for some shots of the Milky Way galaxay, another favourite of mine. Unfortunately there were clouds there too.
