In executing it however, I discovered that I had underestimated the perversity of inanimate objects and natural phenomena. I had three general photographic goals that evolved over the three months that I worked on this. The pursuit of these goals was quite an adventure. I ended up with a set of pictures that largely met my goals, but I was consistently surprised that they were not the ones I expected. Of course, the reason for this may be that I rarely was able to make an exposure without something going wrong.
Every picture has some story behind it that usually includes a disaster.
At first I thought this was just my inexperience, and that I don't function very well in the early predawn hours, but after a while I had to conclude that it was even more than this. This hobby intrinsically has many things that can go wrong. My conclusion, and my advice, is that to do this sport you mostly need perseverence and the right stuff, including good long-underwear. So here are my pictures of Comet Hale-Bopp as it passed through our neighborhood as seen from beneath the skies of Minneapolis and its surrounding area. They are arranged in chronologic order as the comet moved along its path across the constellations in the map above.