On this past Monday night, the peak of the Perseid Meteor Show was supposed to give a fantastic show. I went camping that same night, which by luck fell on the same night as this event.
The site of this amazing camp was at Kolob Reservoir on the Kolob Terrace section of Zion National Park. It was a cool 7,500 ft in elevation and nice and cool for the entire trip. We got there around mid afternoon and picked out the campsite next to the lake. We went for a short hike up the hill, and then relaxed the rest of the day by the lake. This is what a sunset looks like there.
It’s absolutely quiet here, with the occasional boater and fisher to come by. They don’t disturb the quiet very much, since noise will scare fish away. This is at least what I was told when I was younger.
While wandering around getting photos of sunset, I ran across some yellow flowers that are amazing. Take a look:
Around sunset, I setup my equipment to capture the Perseid Meteor Shower. Here is one shot of the constellation Cassiopeia.
I had everything ready for the meteor shower. I took over 80 photos of the constellations trying to capture some meteoric displays, which I saw quite a few awesome trails across the sky. I captured this image:
I looked at this image the next day, seeing a trail in this image. I processed it like crazy to determine if I actually captured a meteor trail. However, I discovered a commercial airline had crossed the sky when I took this image. In all the 80 images, all I got was two airliners. Hence, what I did see of the Perseid Meteor Shower was awesome and exciting. However I came to the conclusion it’s easier to photograph lightning. At least lightning is somewhat easier to predict and anticipate for capturing on film.
The next day, my friend and I went hiking above Kolob Reservoir, and this was the view from the hike:
On the left is Zion Canyon, with the Narrows and Kolob Creek, in the middle is Kolob Reservoir and on the right is the Kolob Canyons and Kolob Fingers.
Kelly Guymon Photography 