Photography and a Lesson in Preparation

Earlier in the year I did a little self investing and I bought myself a star tracker. For anyone that doesn’t know what this does, it can cancel out the rotation of the Earth so that long exposure camera shots can be taken without getting streaky stars.

What it essentially does is rotate the camera very slowly, the same speed as the Earth rotates – so that’s one revolution every 24 hours. It’s a cool bit of kit with an in built camera so I can see what I can point it as closely as possible at the zero axis point. In the northern hemisphere this is nearly bang on with where Polaris (The north star) is but not quite.

Anyways – back to the night I’m talking about, it was clear and I had spent some time before working out how it works, charging it and generally preparing. I even had a separate SD card for storing the photo’s on. I was going to test this in the back garden which is pretty dark but not totally dark it has to be said. I mounted it on the tripod and then mounted the camera.

I then tried the camera. No power left.

At this point a string of expletives may have escaped me, but getting a hold of myself I could still do this and that 20 or 30 minutes of charge would get me something. Slapped the battery on charge! I looked outside, still clear.

A fraught 20 or 30 minutes passed and then I was ready to go. Got outside and bugger me the clouds had arrived. Another string of expletives may have escaped me. Again.

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It was at this point that I realised a few things…

Firstly, the cosmos does it’s thing in it’s time and not mine.

Secondly, I need to be better prepared, allow more time to do this.

Thirdly, even if timing and preparation meet the British weather will always be there to ensure it humiliates me and I need to accept this.

Basically I can do everything right and still fail and there’s nothing wrong with that, it is what it is. Who said taking photo’s was easy?

© Simon Farnell 2013 – 2022

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