I had the opportunity to visit the Central Coast recently, where I grew up - spending a mellow weekend with my cousin, and a good group of guys in a house right on the beach in Morro Bay. I knew it was Bortle 3 on the 9-tier light pollution scale, so I was looking forward to seeing what I could see in the evenings. The night sky did not dissapoint. Early in the evening, Venus, Jupiter , the Moon, and Mars all lined up for their eventual march over the horizon. Later in the evening, the warrior Orion, Mars, and the Moon conspired for a wonderful astronomical buffet in the sky, which set around midnight over the cold Pacific beachbreak. So, after the household was in bed, I trekked the 150 yards or so through the shallow Morro dunes and set up the tripod and DSLR. I was squeezed by the high tide and dunes - with the very flat beach, each set of whitewater pushed about 50 yards inland, before receding back out, leaving me about 20 yards to hopefully stay dry. I'd never staged a landcape photo with a subject in it, but I wanted to somehow capture the human element of looking up at such a beautiful colletion of heavenly bodies, alone on a cold Pacific beach - I think it came close to the mark. The landscape view of Orion, the moon, Sirius, and Mars (Mars is the red dot up and to the right of Orion) was a single 10 second exposure, ISO800 using 14mm Samyang F/2.8 and Canon T4i. The single image of the moon over the water, which took on the orangish glow you can see in the image as it neared setting over the horizon, is a single exposure 5 second, ISO 1600, same camera and stock lens at F/5.