I bought my first digital SLR before departing for Antarctica and a year at the South Pole.  With the year split evenly between six months of day and six months of night, I got pretty good at photographing without the Sun.  I love the light at night.  Colors are deeper and moonlight subtle.  I love photographing the milky way and the aurora were incredible.  I would photograph for fifteen minutes until the batteries froze, then thaw everything out for an hour and do it again.  I'm amazed that original 5D still works to this day.  When I got back to Colorado after a year on the ice, I primarily found myself photographing at night.  With Boulder's iconic Flatirons in my back yard, I had the perfect subject to keep building my skills.  While on the ice, I was also in charge of launching science instruments on balloons to over 100,000 feet to monitor the annual Antarctic Ozone Hole.  From that experience, I began launching my cameras up on balloons to capture the glory of Colorado from the edge of space 100,000 feet above the ground.