Post #2, In the Beginning

Every story has a beginning.  My adventure with nighttime photography began over two years ago. My interest in general photography dates longer, at least 10 years.  I took pictures with a point-and-shoot digital camera for many of those years, and this same point-and-shoot camera was the camera I first used when starting out taking pictures at night.  I now use a digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera...more on how that has helped my photography later!

A friend had wanted to test his pinhole camera at night, and so I went along.  He told me, in convincing me to go along, that if I pointed my camera toward the sky for a timed exposure, I could capture different colors in the sky (from the stars, rotating).

In my mind, what I thought I was going to get was something like this:

However, what I ended up with was this:

As you can see (or cannot, since the pictures are dark), my pictures did not turn out as planned!  I was disappointed, but that set in motion my quest to improve these pictures. And so I set out to do some research: how can I take better pictures?  

Stay tuned for some tips I found to improve my photography!