The Story Behind: "Barn Under Milky Way"

"Take out the trash."

That's all the excitement I had scheduled on the calendar for the evening of June 22, 2015. But instead of wheeling refuse down the driveway this warm summer evening, I instead find myself quickly packing camera bags, starting a pot of coffee and loading all kinds of gear into my vehicle. Why? I had seen a few mentions about the possibility of some strong northern lights that night stream by on the Internet earlier that day. I wasn't planning on heading out to try to photograph the lights. Most of the time the hype of a good aurora show fizzles into the darkness or we are "blessed" with yet another cloudy Minnesota night sky. This night was headed in that direction...until I got this post from a friend on Facebook:

The next thing you know, I'm grabbing everything on my mental "going out to photograph night sky stuff in the dark...all night...alone" checklist that I keep in my head. Tripods. Flashlights. Snacks. Three foot metal pipe. What? (We'll get to that later.) You see, sometimes, all it takes is that one little message from a friend to inspire you to get off your comfy couch on a Monday night to go out and create some great photos of the night sky. And sometimes...you just ignore them and go to sleep super early. But on THIS night, THIS NIGHT, I ventured out...to my driveway, for starters anyways.

As someone who would occasionally go out for hours and hours in search of northern lights and get skunked, I came up with a quick way to see if there was any activity