Always get up.
I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have had an opportunity, both planned and spontaneous, to get up in the middle of the night and dash out for some sort of awesome photo opportunity. You might want to go back to sleep. It is hard to say set an alarm for 2:00 am and then actually get up when it goes off. The bed is so cozy, that dream I was having was so good. The will needed to ignore all of that and pack up and head out into the cold night is tremendous My advice is always get up. This week is a number of examples of why you always always always get up.
This was in 2017 when I packed the fam’ up and headed to the back’woods’ of Oregon to go see the Eclipse in all its glory. I choose where we went to see it based on the historical number of sunny days in the month and and the and I had my new to me’ Sony a7sII (See here for more info on that) So while we were camped in the middle of nowhere with not a street light for miles, I knew that I was ready for Stars. However, much to my dismay as the night rolled in so did the clouds. As always I was going to miss the stars. (This is a bit of a longer story – Check out my blog later this week at jerkwithacamera.com/stars for that. ) But I set an alarm for 3:00 am nonetheless to see what the late late late night would offer. When the alarm went off I was dead tired. But ALWAYS GET UP i said to myself. (that and Miranda rolled over and said you should get up :) and we have some great milky way photos. I unfortunately didn’t have with me the correct adapters to use my fast & super wide Nikon Glass on the Sony so these photos are a wee bit amateurish in terms of Astrophotography but it is a great example of Always get up :)