It’s that time of year again – fall, when the days grow darker, the rains increase and outdoor activities are shelved for another year.  But just because school is back in session, doesn’t mean you can’t camp any more.  It just changes things a little.

This past weekend we hit up Washington’s Mountain Loop Highway for a little river bar camping.  So yes, it gets dark sooner than it does in the middle of summer.  But that only means you have more time for stargazing and playing with fire.

We spent our Saturday cooling off in the river and at night we played around with some long exposures on the camera – setting the shutter priority (the “S” on your camera)  to expose for around 15 seconds.  Once we found a good rock to act as our tripod and dialed in the timing to make the moon look cool, we started playing with lights and fire.

Now normally, I would never advise anyone to run around with burning logs from the fire, but in our case, we were camping on a river rock island surrounded by water.  Our cedar logs were popping and exploding (note the sparks streaking in the shots) but there was no wind, and nothing dry around us to catch fire, so we could act as reckless as we wanted.

Here’s a fun shot we got using a small LED light.

So the lesson here is: don’t give up on camping just because it’s fall.  And don’t be afraid to pull burning logs from the fire and swing them around like burning swords for the sake of good photography!