This image from late September is a middle of the night shot at Enos Lake. Now I know many of you are thinking that I must be super dedicated to climb out of my warm sleeping bag into the crisp midnight air and shoot photography for an hour. Well, two things usually happen to get me motivated. First, I have a 50 plus year old bladder that pushes the issue and if that is not enough I usually have my backpacking partner John returning from his midnight pee to say something like, “The night sky is incredible, if I were a night sky photographer, I would get out and shoot this!” The truth is, these types of images are what motivate me, only a hand full of people have ever made the long trek back to Enos Lake and have seen the night sky. It is truly magical!
Another small note about this image. My camera is pointed northwesterly. You might notice a small amount of light near the horizon. Some might interpret this as light pollution from a nearby city. Not the case! Here at Enos Lake, the nearest city in that direction is Seattle which is about 400 miles away. This small amount of light is the sun refracting in the atmosphere over the top of the North Pole. This far north during the summer months, light from the sun pours over the top of the earth and it never truly gets dark for more than a couple of hours. To the naked eye, it is quite dark, in fact pitch dark. However, with the long exposures, the camera is able to pick up this faint glow of the North Pole’s midnight sun.
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