Here's my image and my story....
When I heard about the Perseid meteor shower I decided early on that I wanted to try and shoot it from the summit of Mount Evans in Arapaho National Forest. I mainly do long exposure star trails, but I thought I'd try some shorter-exposure high-ISO work with the 5D3 to get "frozen" stars with a meteor streak in the the shot. That requires a lot of luck, I know, but I set out none the less with this goal in mind.
I spent most of yesterday getting my gear ready, charging batteries, testing speedlights, getting the color gels laid out that I would use, etc. I even got my cold weather gear out since I knew the summit would be chilly.
The clear sky charts were questionable, but a clearing was indicated between 1am - 4am, so I thought I'd go for it. I set out early, around 9:30pm, and I'm glad I did. The base of Mount Evans is about an hour from Denver, and then there's the summit road to drive. I forgot how dicey that summit road is, and in the middle of the night, the sheer drop-offs make for quite a white knuckle drive. I think the 14-mile summit access road took me an hour alone.
When I got to the top, I immediately started setting up my gear and taking some shots. The sky was clear, and I didn't want to waste it. Good thing too - because within about 40 minutes heavy clouds rolled in and the rest of the night was a bust. The shot below is my favorite of about only 12 photos I took last night. This is by far the fewest number of photos I've ever taken given the amount of preparation and driving I did.
Even with only one good photo to show for my efforts, it was well worth it....
