{"id":38,"date":"2026-04-23T20:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T00:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/?p=38"},"modified":"2026-04-26T12:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T16:10:14","slug":"in-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/?p=38","title":{"rendered":"In the beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I looked up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well&#8230; not really. &#8216;The Beginning&#8217; is most often a reference to the beginning of the universe. Which I believe is created by God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To quote a movie I recently watched: &#8220;It beats the alternative&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the beginning of my astrophotography journey began most probably when my grandpa Jim gave me his Nikon camera. He used it to take pictures of birds. And he and my grandma would do a lot of traveling until they didn&#8217;t. Jim had a stroke and wasn&#8217;t getting much use out of his camera anymore. So I was honored to receive it as a gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I really didn&#8217;t know how to use it. I had learned a little about ISO, shutter speed, and aperture while talking with photographer friends at college. But I failed to understand anything about framing a subject, capturing a moment, or telling a story. And honestly&#8230; I&#8217;m still learning a lot about those things. But I really wanted to use my grandpa&#8217;s camera. It came with a kit lens and a zoom lens. Both Nikon branded and fine for nearly all applications. I also had a tripod and the bag came with a remote shutter and some extra batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But&#8230; what would I take pictures of?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For a while I used it primarily for portraits and for videos. It made a very impressive video camera compared to the phones at the time. Though phones have really improved in this regard. But I was finding myself with a lot of time reflect while living alone in Toledo and I really enjoyed the quiet nights. The starts brought me comfort and made me feel like I was being watched over by my God. So one night I decided to try getting a picture of the stars. I setup the tripod and opened the shutter for as long as I could, 30s. I expected to see nice stars dotting a black background with a dimly lit tree in the foreground. What I got was an over exposed tree and no stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"461\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_20211203_190958-461x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-39\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_20211203_190958-461x1024.jpg 461w, https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_20211203_190958-135x300.jpg 135w, https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_20211203_190958-768x1707.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_20211203_190958-691x1536.jpg 691w, https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_20211203_190958-921x2048.jpg 921w, https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_20211203_190958-scaled.jpg 1152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 461px) 100vw, 461px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t have that first picture. But I do have this photo that I took with my phone. It&#8217;s just as good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The beginning of my astrophotography journey began most probably when my grandpa Jim gave me his Nikon camera. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/59"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillipcook.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}