Notes To My Mother

I am standing alone in the dark at 11,000 feet in the Patriarch Grove of Bristlecone Pines in the  White Mountains of California. One of the least light polluted places in the US. The sun has been down now for quite a while and I am thinking night is in full swing. The stars are out, getting bright and clear. The North Star is visible and all of the stars of the Big Dipper are coming into view. I turn on the camera and point it toward Polaris, the North Star. It is going to be a four minute exposure. The time passes slowly. Finally the red light goes off, and I see the captured image in the viewfinder on the back of my camera. Oh my, where did all that light come from? The stars are popping with brightness If you leave a camera on for a while it will pick up light you don’t notice with the naked eye. You may think it is dark, but the camera sees so much better than we do.  On this occasion it was absorbing all of the last remaining light as the sun s...