One of our favourite places to spend a summer night is by a campfire. From social gatherings at our vacation spot to quiet evenings in the backyard, we have idled away many a dark hour. It is part of the fabric that is our family.
The appeal of the campfire is like a kitchen table, it draws people together to converse and relax.
Yet the blaze isn’t the only star attraction. Where we live, away from the glare of any urban centre, there is nothing so perfect as a starlit sky. Between conversations and staring at the fire, it is common to find one’s self gazing quite literally off into space, into what seems like heaven and beyond.
Several years ago, our daughter and her new boyfriend came home from Toronto for a visit. My husband and I were away when they arrived, and when we returned they were comfortably seated, of course, by a campfire. Joining the party, I was nonplussed to see that the young man was not remotely interested in the show at the centre of our gathering, but with head bent back was looking to the stars for his entertainment.
When I mentioned to him, that the stars were particularly bright that night his response, to my amazement, was that he had never seen anything like it before. A born-and-raised cosmopolitan, with no need to travel outside the urban area for anything, he explained that the city lights dim the potential for such wonder. A glimpse of one or two on a clear night perhaps, but a spectacle such as this he had only seen in pictures.
That took my head in a different direction as I began to puzzle out if you could possibly capture with camera a night sky that would do the real thing justice. For those wondering the same, I have scoped out these informative sites offering some suggestions:
National Geographic Photographing the Night Sky
Digital Photography School How to Photograph the Stars
Nikon Photographing the Night Sky
wikihow.com Photograph the Night Sky
PetaPixel How to Photograph the Night Sky
