late sunday night (august 12th, 2018) into early monday morning (august 13th, 2018), i set off to vasquez rocks, ca to photograph the peak of the perseid meteor shower. i've never actually captured a shooting star in a photo before so i was excited to pull this off for the first time. the rugged landscape of vasquez rocks would be the perfect backdrop for a great long exposure meteor shot to where you can also capture the milky way at the same time. i arrived at the location around 11pm, parked my truck on the side of the road, and made about a half to 3/4 mile hike into the park to a place i wanted to set up at with a great view of the rocks and the milky way. my equipment was pretty minimal; sling camera backpack, tripod, and a camping chair. after setting my all my camera equipment, i just sat back in my chair and snapped 30 second exposures at 1250iso on a wide-angle 8mm lens, one after another. at the peak of the shower after midnight, i'd say there were at least one meteor per minute. some of them were fast and dim, while others were slower and bright. i felt very blessed to have such active skies for my photo shoot. at approximately 1:15am, i observed 3 brighter-than-star orbs appear in the northern sky. they were absolutely in space (as far as i could tell) since there was no noise whatsoever. the white orbs literally looked like very bright stars (like, brighter than even jupiter or saturn appear). after only a few seconds from when they first appeared, the 3 orbs came together into a perfect triangular formation, which lasted not even 5 seconds total before they all came close together and stopped for a few more seconds at a closer distance to each other. next, one of the orbs take off in a northerly direction and seems to instantly disappear while the other 2 orbs head towards the south. this is when i started my camera to capture this event. in my photo, the remaining 2 orbs are traveling to the south, hence the light trails from a 30 second exposure. each orb travels exactly parallel to each other and at a close proximity (they could be a larger distance from each other; they're in space from what i could tell). the orb on the bottom disappears after only a few seconds of travel time while the orb on the top abruptly stops, changes direction by reversing about half-way back to where it originally started from, stops again, then gets much brighter before disappearing all together. to my eyes, the event was much larger than my photo reveals since my camera lens was so wide making everything appearing to be smaller it really is. this whole event really freaked me out! i felt the hair on my head and arms stand up as i knew what had just happened and i was basically overwhelmed with emotion. after reviewing my shot, i just couldn't stay there any longer so i packed up and left immediately. the drive back home to los angeles is still a blur. to be honest, i'm reluctant to share my ufo photo just yet. i would like seek advise on how to properly post or share a rare photo with the public, such as this. i feel like my photo is of some worth so if anyone has any experience with capturing a ufo in a photograph and allowing the media to share it, i would love to hear your insight on how to do this properly. in the meantime, here is a couple photos of shooting stars that i took right before all this took place. thanks for reading!

Images

‹ ›