Posts

Reflections on the summer of 2025 (pt 1)

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As summer winds down it’s time for me to reflect on the last several months. I’ve been busy around the house (as always). We lost one of our senior dogs a couple of months ago, which was an emotional blow. I also spent as much time as was practical getting out when and where I could to indulge in this new hobby of night sky photography. I’m focussing in this post on a highlight of a recent camping trip out to Garden of the Gods in SE Illinois in Shawnee National Forest. My previous trip out here was cut short by the impending death of Peanut, so I was looking forward to getting back there for some clear skies and photography. The first night was good, some high level clouds, and I got some good Milky Way photos that I’m still sorting through and processing. The second night though was stellar (excuse the pun). The sky was completely clear, no clouds and no wind. So I decided to stretch my limits and try a holy grail time lapse video of the Milky Way moving through the night sky. ...
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Final Friday in Old Town Greenwood

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 Final Fridays shoppers coming here from my business card. You can get to my online photo gallery from the SmugMug link on the left.  (or  https://davemccaskill.smugmug.com/Art/Final-Fridays ) Thank you!
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The Story of Peanut

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(Or… a story of the bitey-ist, most nervous unadoptable senior dog ever) (change of topic for this blog for now) We said goodbye to Peanut yesterday. We gave him the best life we could for just over 8 of the 16-17 years he had on this earth.  putting on his best good boy smile He was our “free” April Fools’ Day adoption from the local pound. We had gone looking for an adoptable dog to be a companion for Gizmo. My father-in-law would soon be moving out of our house and we felt Gizmo would need company during the day while my wife and I were still working full-time.  happy to have found a new pack All the dogs we saw were older pit bulls, shepherds, hounds and other large breeds with questionable backgrounds. We didn’t feel we would be comfortable trusting any of the large dogs with Gizmo (he's a 22 lb alpha dog and would likely have tried alpha dogging any large dog we brought into the house).  As we were walking out, we saw a photo of “Muggsly” on the wall. He had been pi...
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Back to blogging after a brief hiatus

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 Hey, I'm back. I obviously haven't been doing a good job of keeping the old blog active, but I'm hoping to change that in the days and weeks ahead. As my last post indicated, Milky Way season is back on us. I made one short trip to Brown County State Park about an hour south of where I live a couple of weeks ago. Bortle 4 night sky conditions, so it still has a significant amount of light pollution, but much better than the suburbs. Normally this should have been a relatively good area for Milky Way photography, but high level haze from wild fires up in Canada really decreased transparency in the atmosphere. Despite that challenge, I managed to get a couple of decent shots, including my first successful tracked image using a new (to me) Benro Polaris Astro tracking head. The first night trying to use it was a complete failure, so I spent much of the following day testing camera and Benro settings till I got things right. User error (ha!). Lots to learn with this new toy. T...
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Milky Way season is back

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It’s Milky Way season again. Which means it’s time to start planning and praying to the clear sky gods for them to do their thing. I’ve gone back to this image from Aug 2023 many times, editing and re-editing it as I learn more about working with these types of images. Each time I get it closer to where I want it.  This almost final version of the image is a composite of 8 star images (Canon R6, Sigma 20mm f/1.4 DG HSM shot at f/1.6, 20 sec, 1600 ISO) stacked and aligned using Starry Landscape Stacker with a single image of the approaching train overlaid in Photoshop with a mask to focus the light. Final tweaks in Lightroom.  The approaching train light painting the foreground was completely fortuitous, but I know what time and day of the week it passes through (for future reference).  New to me this year is a star tracking head for my tripod and camera. Because who doesn’t need more camera gear, right? I got this very lightly used Benro Polaris with Astro head for a...
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New exhibition

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  I delivered this bad boy to the Anderson Museum of Art yesterday for display at their 44th Annual IN-Focus exhibition from April 4 - May 24, 2025. This is a gorgeous 30x20" acrylic print courtesy of Roberts Photo Lab here in Indianapolis. Nothing really does justice to your photos more than printing them out and holding them in your hand (or in this case hanging it on your wall). This is your regular reminder to support local artists, and support small businesses. 
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Nature's Inspirations

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Anyone in the Indianapolis area looking to support local artists should head over to Cool Creek Nature Center for their annual Nature's Inspirations Art Exhibit . It's running from today (Feb 22) through March 8 and showcases photography, paintings and 3D art with the theme of being inspired by Nature. I've got two large prints on display, and for sale ;). Go check it out.
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