Good-morning, kittens and dawgs! A week ago this past Monday, we took a spontaneous trip to the mountains with the hopes of seeing Mars at its closer than usual position above the earth. Not nearly as close as it was a few years ago, but apparently it was worthy enough for the news to run a piece on it. Unfortunately, my night photos did not turn out well, but I did a fantastic sunset shot.
I’m not going to lie to you folks, I tweaked this picture a bit. Here, I’ll let you see the original.
This isn’t a bad photo. The exposure is off just a bit. Thankfully, photo-editing makes it easy peasy to fix your image to your liking. In the first image, I used Pixelmator to apply the healing brush to remove the hot white spot in the sunset and increased the color saturation.
It surprised us to see a gathering of folks at Water Rock Knob on a week night, but with a few small nearby towns then no doubt this an excellent afternoon R&R destination spot.
Just before getting on the parkway in Cherokee, we got dinner to-go from Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and it was great fun to sit in the car enjoying our meal with such a magnificent view stretched before our eyes. You just can’t get this kind of atmosphere in a restaurant. After we ate, we began snapping pictures. Me with my big girl camera and DH with his iPhone. I love that we like photographing together! This has been a shared hobby of ours for 20+ years.
About 10pm, we decided to head across the Smoky’s. The peak for Mars closeness to earth was shortly after midnight, so we figured we could get another glimpse of the Red Planet one more time from there before going home.
At first I thought I didn’t want to share any of my Mars pictures with you and then I thought why not? So, I found one that is passable. In the below picture, you’ll see that I labeled Mars, as well as Saturn in the night sky. I only know this because I used my iPhone app Sky Safari to see what else I might want to know what I’m looking at.
The evening was well spent in our favorite, most beautiful place! What more could a gal ask for? Ah, a million dollars? Nah, not that I’d turn it down or anything, but I’d settle for a nice job for DH in town. 
I’m sharing my photos with the International Shutterbug Association (Yep, I just came up with that one. I wonder, if anyone else has thought of this before?) and if you want to see what the sky view is like elsewhere, then I hop over to Skywatch Friday!
~All images captured with my big girl camera ~ Nikon D7000 & preferred lens Nikkor 18-105mm zoom, unless otherwise noted.~
Now, I’m joining Lexa in Celebrate the small things.
I’m celebrating…
- the adventures behind my photo shots.
- sharing the same hobby with my best friend and husband.
- cool mountain temperatures and a beautiful evening.
- the amazing mysterious universe. Are we alone? Probably. But, it’s fun to think we aren’t.
What are you celebrating?
Let’s begin celebrating with Friendship Friday and Friday Features linky parties where you’re sure to make new friends and get lots of inspiration!
That’s a wrap for now, but if you like music then I invite you to come back on Monday for Mewsic Moves Me. Until next time, have a fototastic weekend!
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Sunset pics are my favourite!! And both of them are great — even without the editing you captured it beautifully. But Mars! How cool!! I don’t think my camera lens is strong enough to capture that? Maybe my zooms might get it…. I’ll have to try some night sky photography this summer.
Les, I used my 55mm-300mm lens for those shots of Mars, but I didn’t have it maxed out. I don’t have a tripod which I very much need for photographing the night sky. I’m looking forward to seeing what you capture this summer.
What a gorgeous sunset! And the Mars shot is pretty neat, too. It’s great that you and your husband share the same hobby. Great celebrations all around! Enjoy your weekend!
Lori, we are like-minded in many things. Our personalities are different, but our interests are the same. Maybe, this is why we’re a good mesh for 40 years (including the three years we dated). I celebrate our relationship every day. I’m very blessed!
What a great job you did tweaking the first pic. Lovely colors! Apps can be so cool. My husband has one that can identify a song if it just hears the first 20 seconds of it. It’s an amazing world we live in. Have a lovely weekend!
Lexa, the song identifier app is cool. That’s one I can use. Do you know which one he uses? I’m glad you liked the creative touch to my photo. I’d like to get more involved in photo art, but my imagination limits me at times. I’ll just do what I can and it’ll fall in place one day. Have a good weekend!
There’s a skywatch app? I’m going to have to check that out.
Liz, yeah there’s quite a few of them. Sky Safari is the one I used the other night. There’s also Sky Guide, Sky Walk, Solar System, Distant Sun, & StarMap 3D . I have all of these, but I haven’t used them much. I think DH got most when Apple ran them as a free offer or dropped to 99 cents. It’s good to have a variety of apps.
Pretty sky shot. Thanks for sharing the original. I do a lot of editing, and it’s a good idea to share the original(s)!!
I always love your photos. Especially the Mars one is interesting. And sharing it is a great idea!
I like both photos and what a spectacular sunset! In the times of years ago, the photographers had to tweak their photos while developing it. I bet you wished you had a telescope. I’m glad you marked the names down. There is another white dot below that, at first, I thought was a piece of dust on the screen-hahahaaaaa. I wonder what planet that is?
Birgit, a telescope would be awesome for viewing the night sky. We have one, but I didn’t think to take it. Drats! Oh well…maybe next time. The light you see just below Mars is Antares. This is what Wikipedia says: “Antares is the fifteenth brightest star in the night sky and the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius, and is often referred to as “the heart of the scorpion”. I thought about labeling it, but forgot.
Thanks for dropping by today!
Wow I love your photos. What a wonderful hobby you have. Thanks for sharing!
Julie, having a hobby that interests us makes our bond all the more tighter. We celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary yesterday and if you include our dating years then we’ve been a couple for almost 40 years. We not only love one another, but we actually like each other and love to spend time together. How many people can say that after all this time? lol
Hi, Cathy!
These pictures are very exciting, both the sunset view from the Knob that you tweaked for our enjoyment, and the pictures of Mars and Saturn together in the nighttime sky. You are lucky the sky was clear and that you picked a vantage point far from the city lights.
I think it’s great that you and DH share the hobby of photography. Your post reminds me how obsessed I was with astronomy when I was a boy, so much so that I begged for an received a telescope for Christmas one year. Our house was situated on a hillside and my dad and I used to climb a ladder to the roof, set up the telescope and gaze for hours at the moon and stars. It is a humbling experience that puts things in perspective as I’m sure you and DH would agree.
Thank you very much, dear friend Cathy, and enjoy your Friday and weekend!
Tom, oh yes, we were fortunate to have clear skies the night we saw Mars. That’s the only reason we ventured out to see the occurrence. Over the past years, we’ve made special trips to the mountains to escape the city noise to see various comets passing thousands of miles over our heads. I remember the first time we did this sort of thing and that was in the early 80s to catch a peek at Haley’s comet. After the kiddies were born, we took them at least two times in the late 90s to see Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp, which were quite impressive and loads of fun. You’re right, staring up into all that vastness and seeing billions of stars one can’t help to think that all of his didn’t just happen. It was perfectly orchestrated by a divine artist, our Creator and heavenly Father.
Your memories of star gazing with your dad sound lovely. I know that’s gotta feel you with warmth while smile spreads across your face. Thanks for sharing that with me. One more thing, DH and I watched last night Kingpin per your recommendation and we’re so glad that we took your advice. We got a good laugh out of this flick.
Yay! I’m so glad you and DH enjoyed Kingpin. Mrs. Shady and I think it is one of the funniest movies ever made. How about Bill Murray’s wild hair flying around during the tourney! (LOL)
Have a great weekend, dear friend Cathy!
Tom, yes Bill’s flying hair was comical. I kept thinking, Trump’s hair looks really good compared to Murray’s mess. lol Did I mention yesterday was our 37th wedding anniversary? I fixed steaks & potatoes on the grill with steamed asparagus. For dessert, I made DH’s favorite NY style Cheesecake. It was a great fun to incorporate your movie suggestion into our celebration. TTFN!