Photography With Kevin

September 15, 2019
Reading Time: about 1 minute

My brother Kevin is a fascinating man. I’ll write a post about him another day, but he’s become a fantastic photographer. If you’re interested, I’d highly recommend checking out his work.

A few months ago, I was considering trying out new hobbies, so I reached out to my friend Annie. We were initially planning on driving to some random mountain to try and take milky way photos, but I mentioned this to Kevin who instantly shut it down – too much light pollution.

If you’re going to do something, do it right.

Ouch.

Luckily he offered a solution. He whipped up several friends and proposed driving to Big Sur that night. Before long we were en route with gear and food.

We arrived to tons of tourists, but winds soon grew fierce with sunset and virtually everyone left. Photographers began setting up and Kevin drove around to explore several other vantage points.

He taught me the essentials: how to focus the camera at infinity and ensure that it’d capture the stars without blur, and how to frame. He told me several other things but I’ll be honest; I forgot them. Oof.

By the end of the night I’d taken this picture:

“Beautiful”, I thought. I’ve peaked; time to find a new hobby. \s

Joking aside, I really was quite proud. I hadn’t expected to capture that many stars. I sent this to my family and received “where was this?” and “wow crazy boys”.

A few days later, my brother finished editing:

I was absolutely floored – this was worlds different from what I’d taken, but it’d been from the same location and time. How was it possible???? (Magic, obviously).

Dad noted “Wow, this one is REALLY GOOD” haha. I can’t disagree.