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?
Join the party below!
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!