Heather Dalton Photography | Blog » night

Galveston at 4am

Heather — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:59:53 +0000

We went to Galveston to try to catch a view of Comet McNaught several weeks ago. We were unsuccessful because of cloud cover and light pollution, but I did manage to get a few decent pictures while it was still dark.

The Milky Way

Star trails and the lights from boats and oil rigs in the Gulf

First light appears on a cloudtop while several stars are still visible

Nacogdoches and Blue Lagoon

Heather — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 03:07:09 +0000

Over Memorial Day, Em, Juliane, and I headed up to Nacogdoches to get Em and Juliane scuba certified. We had some free time in the evenings, so one night we went out to my old stomping grounds, the Stephen F. Austin State University Observatory. We got to use the 18-inch telescope (used by NASA to find landing spots on the moon during the Apollo program!) to look at Saturn and some deep sky objects. Very cool!

Saturn and the lights in the 18-inch telescope’s dome (I had it on a long exposure from the previous shot and didn’t realize it as I tried to take a picture of Saturn through the telescope eyepiece. Once I realized my mistake, I moved the camera away to change the exposure, making the curved lines and blurs in the picture. I think it makes a neat abstract image.)

Star trails and the 18-inch telescope dome. The bright one in the middle of the frame is Venus setting in the west. The top of the dome is lit from the full Moon rising behind us!

The limb of the Moon through an 8-inch telescope

Em and Juliane trained in the classroom and the pool at Diver’s Depot before heading down for some open water training at Blue Lagoon in Huntsville, Texas

We camped one night before diving more the next day. Thunderstorms down in northeast Houston lit up the sky

Two newly-certified divers and their divemaster (me!)

Moon!

Heather — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:52:39 +0000

We had a rare low-humidity evening here in Houston, and I caught a decent photo of a first quarter moon!

Emily in Austin

Heather — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:54:48 +0000

When we were in Austin in October, I took a few pictures of Emily downtown and at the Capitol at night.

Emily’s downtown Houston nighttime portraits

Heather — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:52:48 +0000

After seeing Phantom of the Opera in downtown Houston, Em and I did an impromptu photo shoot by a fountain across the street from the theater. There was some uplighting from some glass squares on the sidewalk, and then by the fountain there was a bright greenish backlight. I used my external flash off to her side and had her hold still for 6 to 8 seconds so I could get the sky and buildings to be nice and bright. She did a great job!

lightning!

Heather — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:58:25 +0000

We had some amazing lightning in Houston a couple of days ago! I was lucky and got this shot from my apartment balcony.