Other Pics From Vinoy Night Shooting

Here are some more night pictures taken at the Vinoy.   Existing now in Bedlam rather than Shawshank does not afford me as easy an access to the Park and the downtown St. Pete areas I used to enjoy going to during the early morning hours.  It can still be done, traffic is light, but Bedlam is in Clearwater and just takes longer to get there. It was nice to get back.

This is the Vinoy park looking North toward Bedlam (Egads!) and the Tampa Metro area.

In most of the landscape pics you will notice orbs.  These are not pesky impish ghosts but rather glass flare from the particular lens I am using.  These flares happen with zoom lenses that you can adjust - prime lenses, meaning single millimeter, which are non-adjustable usually has no flare. 

I post this poor sky picture just to show you the amount of light pollution down here.  There is no escaping it; try as you might, the light will simply obscure many stars and constellations.  Northlandia is becoming increasingly blighted according to a map I saw which showed areas you need to go to escape it - those places are mainly in the West, or North Korea.   

This is a somewhat strangely tweaked picture of the Whitted Airport and looking directly East across the bay.  The length of the exposure has turned a green navigational light to teal.  If you look close enough right-center you can see an elongated white streak in the sky.  That would be a far off airplane.  

Another shot of the Whitted airport.  

I took a few star pictures and noticed one had this streak in it.  I cropped it and zoomed in and frankly can't really tell if it is a plane high up or not.  The sequential reds kind of attest to it, but then again it looks almost too streaky for a plane.  I have no idea, but for lack of anything else, I guess we can say it was either a faint meteor, a very high plane, or an aberration on the camera sensor. 

You'll also notice that the stars seem elongated rather than round.  This is what happens when you expose for too long - the heavens rotate constantly and if you don't adjust accordingly you'll end up with what is called "star trails".  This may have been a 30 second exposure, I should have shortened it to either 15 or 20 seconds to compensate. 

Always enjoy night shooting and hope to do more in the future even if it is less than ideal around here.  I have written to Santa and asked for a Tokina wide angle lens that would allow for more sky when I do some night shots.  While I don't think I've been all that good, I'm counting on Santa overlooking some misdeeds just because we have had a pretty good relationship over the decades.