Archives

It’s been months since I photographed a rocket launch, even though we’ve had a lot of them here on the Space Coast. I’ve been busy working and also writing books (under my pen name). There’s only so much time in the day … or the year. Which is almost over. But I couldn’t resist checking out the SpaceX Heavy launch and booster return on a beautiful evening … followed by another SpaceX launch, a Falcon 9 carrying more Starlink satellites.

My framing was a bit off for the Heavy launch, meaning the returning boosters can be seen just at the right edge of the composite image. Both images were shot on the edge of the Indian River Lagoon in Rockledge in slightly different locations. I wanted to include the pretty boat lit up for the holidays. The only disappointment is that from this angle, I couldn’t get the moon in the launch shot with my 12-24mm lens.

 
SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center at twilight on April 30, 2023, with the ViaSat 3 internet satellite and two other payloads. I went to Cocoa Village to try to get a shot. It was about a half hour after sunset, and I could have tried a streak shot but worried it wouldn’t be quite dark enough for the long exposure (and I didn’t have an appropriate neutral density filter).

Instead, I opted to bring out Big Bertha (the 200-500mm lens) with mixed results. Even when the photos are rough, images of these launches always have a touch of the spectacular with all the fire and color.

 

The GoPro timelapse (shot in nightlapse mode on a Hero 8) turned out nicely. Check out the video for 45 seconds of magic.

Roll over any photo to see a caption, or click on an image to start a slide show.

Being a morning person is a good quality for a photographer who strives to capture the best light of the day. I’m not a morning person. However, I will drag myself out of bed for a predawn SpaceX launch in hopes of getting cool light effects.

Only this morning I woke up extra early, took the dogs out and found the launch had been pushed until shortly after sunrise. Oh, well! I was up already. So I headed to Cocoa Village’s Riverfront Park and took a few photos.

 
With the rocket heading away toward the northeast with its GPS cargo, the launch photos were ho-hum. (No doubt someone north of the launch site got a great pic with the rising sun.) But the sunrise photos were very nice indeed. And the video is relaxing – part sunrise timelapse, part launch.

Roll over any image to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show.

Another day, another rocket launch from the Space Coast – only it’s never routine. Especially when you have a SpaceX Heavy launch, a beautiful twilight and the return of two boosters to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Of course, someday I’d like to be super close to the booster return. I’ve seen a booster return from the Cape (and other places), but always with an obstructed view. That said, it’s pretty magical to see the separation from a little distance and witness all the mechanics of the return overhead and the boosters plummeting back to Earth. These moments really feel like science fiction.

 
So with all the wonder of this launch, with a Space Force payload, I’d say my photos are not technically great, but they’re interesting. The wide-angle shots are fine and caught the pretty light and arc of the contrail and “jellyfish.”

For the zoomed shots, I have a Nikon 200-500mm lens. I love it, for the most part, but it’s a challenge to focus on the fly because there isn’t just one infinity. (As my husband jokes, it’s to infinity and beyond.) So the trees far across the lagoon might be in focus, but the rocket as it lifts into the sky might be just a little “more” infinity. The lens is heavy, and while I sometimes use a tripod, handheld works better when you’re pointing up. Thus adjusting the focus to catch a zooming rocket poses an additional challenge. There’s also a haze factor at times, not to mention insane distances, but I think today my focus just wasn’t perfect.

Still, you can see the boosters separate and make their return burns in the photos, and yes, it’s still like science fiction. One of the coolest shots is a booster silhouetted, seemingly tiny, against the fiery orange of the contrail as the hardware hurtles back to Earth.

I ran two GoPros from my viewing spot in Cocoa Village, one in “Nightlapse” mode and the other in regular timelapse mode, trying to cover my bases as the light changed just after sunset. The videos were quite similar, only one was wider than the other. You can see both in the video.

Roll over any image to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show.

I’m competitive. I try not to be. I know this society is all about WINNING ALL THE TIME. And I want to win and get approval and all of those things. But I don’t like my competitive tendencies all that much. They lead to comparison-itis, which plays a lot into my writing career. Not so much my photography, because I know I don’t always have the opportunities other photographers have. I try to make things work where I am.

I did have a great opportunity Monday evening, but time and logistics screwed me over. We had passes to be at the Cape Canaveral lighthouse for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch and booster return. I spent hours getting my cameras ready and plotting where I would shoot.

We’d had a difficult time getting to the site (thanks to blocked roads) the last time we went to the lighthouse, so this time, I figured we’d take the “main” road we exited on last time. We traveled through the base and down this long road only to find it was blocked with no obvious, quick way around to our destination. Which we found out uncomfortably close to launch time. There was no way to figure out the right route there by then – Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is a sprawling campus webbed with pitch-black roads through wild areas that wind hither and yon – so we had to settle for a shot from the causeway.

 
This last-minute change meant I not only couldn’t get the shots I wanted, but I didn’t have time to set up all my cameras or properly set up what I had. The photos didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I was using a different camera for the long-lens shot than I usually do. It’s heavy with the 200-500mm lens and hard to handle anyway. I fumbled with the settings, messing up some shots and, in the process, somehow turning the quality setting from JPG Fine + RAW to just Fine as the rocket was in flight, limiting my editing options later. The streak shot on the other camera went out of frame, a less than desirable outcome. Basically, it was a photographic disaster.

Symbolic of this fiasco is the exposure after the streak shot; I accidentally hit the shutter again and got a crazy zigzag light show as I repositioned (the image you see in the blog list). Eh, maybe it’s art.

These photos aren’t awful. But they aren’t what I envisioned. And I saw another shot from the lighthouse that night – not the one I’d planned out, but still, it reminded me of the opportunity I missed. There was a painful lesson in this: Figure out the blocked roads ahead of time and allow an extra hour to get there and set up. Even if the launch is in the middle of the night. Or especially if it is.

Time is a photographer’s friend. You don’t always have that luxury; storm chasing is a prime example. It’s very much a run-and-gun situation. But when you can take extra time to set up, it’s always worthwhile.

You can roll over a photo to see the caption or click on one to start a slide show.

Every launch is a little different, even when you see them from the same place over and over. We got to treat visiting friends to a SpaceX launch from a prime viewing spot at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on December 8, and it was still fresh and uniquely challenging for me as I tried to take photos.

The trajectory for the rocket, carrying OneWeb broadband internet satellites, almost took it overhead. With the sunset light and the clear evening, the booster separation was beautifully clear. And the booster was highly visible as it returned to Earth.

As a bonus, the sonic boom from the returning booster provided a visceral thrill – as well as a humorous surprise for our guests.

The short version: It never gets old.

One funny note about the timelapse video, to which I’ve added some of the photos I shot … you may glimpse a bunch of little dots flying around. These are mosquitoes, whose bloodthirsty squadrons have been plaguing us for weeks in spite of a spate of dry weather. Ah, Florida in December.

Roll over any image to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show.

Life’s been busy, so I haven’t posted all the rocket launches I’ve shot lately from Florida’s Space Coast. And there have been a lot. While one was a United Launch Alliance jaunt, the rest were SpaceX.

The gallery below includes photos from a handful of launches, including today’s SpaceX Falcon Heavy with Space Force payloads. In other words, secret defense stuff.

Well, the launch was so secret, even the weather got involved. Even though we were lucky enough to get passes for the ITL (or Integrate-Transfer-Launch) causeway in the northern part of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, dense fog obscured almost everything, including lift-off.

The double booster landing wasn’t so clear either, at least from where we were. I’d love to get in a better position to shoot the boosters returning. The spectacle is so sci-fi. The sonic booms were viscerally entertaining, however, and I got a few nice shots of the rocket in its ascent.

The video focuses on recent SpaceX launches including today’s Heavy.

Click on any image below to start a slide show; roll over them to see captions.

I believe I am not the only one: Photographers spend a lot of time thinking about what they could’ve done better. Storm chasing is much the same way. If I had access to a time machine, there are several tornado events I’d like to revisit, reshoot and re-experience. Of course, it helps when you know where things will happen and when.

Last night, or should I say early this morning, I had one of those moments when shooting a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch of a Globalstar satellite.

Rocket launches are challenging. Pads change. Rockets change. Trajectories change. And even if you’re using an app or dead reckoning or whatever, it’s sometimes hard to predict exactly where the rocket will appear in your photo. I’m so impressed by the photographers who do the math and get a rocket crossing the moon. I’m just trying to figure out where it’s going to leave the horizon and how the arc of a time exposure at night will frame objects in the foreground.

I set up at Port Canaveral by Exploration Tower. My GoPro timelapse would include the tower; I planned for my still image, shot with a Nikon D500, not to include it. But I knew the industrial towers across the water might be a problem; the rocket would go up around there, and one of the towers might block the horizon where it lifted off. And that’s exactly what happened. I should’ve stayed in position to get the reflection I wanted, but at the last moment I dashed away a few feet to shoot the still image and basically didn’t get anything I wanted. Sigh. That said, here’s the image so you can judge for yourself.

Complicating matters, a lightning storm in the distance taunted me, but without two different exposures and compositing the images, I didn’t see a great way to get the launch and the lightning in my photo. I did get a couple of stills with just the storm, soft and dim over the port’s bright lights.

The video, on the other hand, is pretty darn cool. The lightning storm offshore to the north strobes as the port’s lights flicker and change color. Suddenly, with a brilliant burst of light, the rocket launches upward, sets the clouds aglow, then arcs as it continues toward orbit. The whole video is less than a minute. I love all the color and light.

And I’m already considering how to frame the next one.

When I go out to shoot a launch, I really should take everything – all the lenses. All the cameras. But sometimes, I like to travel light, even if I’m just going around the block from where I live. So today – January 31, 2022 – I took one camera with a wide-angle lens and a GoPro to shoot a SpaceX rocket launch.

The launch wasn’t very close, given I shot it from Rockledge, Florida, along the banks of the Indian River Lagoon. But today, the wide shot was pretty. The purples of twilight, with cirrus clouds catching the pink of the setting sun, offered a lovely backdrop for the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket with an Italian radar satellite.

I had a moment of regret that I didn’t have my super-big lens when the booster turned around and headed back home as the payload continued on its way. At a different time of day (or night), this “jellyfish” might have been even brighter, but it was still impressive. In my shots, it’s just a small part of the whole, but you can see the bright heat of the engines as white dots.

Nights like this make me feel like I’m living in a science-fiction movie with a spaceport just down the road. And with the number of launches scheduled for this year, we’ll be seeing a lot more sights like this one, I hope.

Several seconds after the rocket booster returned and landed at Cape Canaveral, we were rewarded with the sonic boom. They’re always satisfying, somehow – and it’s a fun moment in the video.

It was a beautiful night for a rocket launch this evening in Cocoa, Florida, where I set up a Nikon and a GoPro to capture the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This was a special mission – Inspiration4, the first private human spaceflight mission to orbit. Commissioned by Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, it aims to raise awareness for the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. And also, no doubt, to mount a landmark adventure.

The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 8:02 p.m. EDT. A few clouds made the launch even more beautiful as the rocket lit them during its ascent, and then the sun caught the vehicle and its contrail, creating the “jellyfish” effect one often sees just after sunset or just before dawn. The SpaceX launches are always visually interesting at night for their colorful effects during the journey, especially when captured with a zoom lens, as in this post.

Tonight, I used purely a wide angle lens on the Nikon D7100, my trusty 12-24mm, and I stacked a handful of images to create the still photo. I probably could’ve gotten a cool image just by leaving the shutter open, but I wanted to try it this way. I set the GoPro to shoot in “nightlapse” mode to produce the video.