The many faces of Alstrom Point

My trip to the Southwest last April with a group of friends had three planned destinations. The Bisti Badlands/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, Alstrom Point and the White Pocket. I have pretty much gone through the Bisti Badlands images and posted those on my website except for a few that I am still working on. The Alstrom Point images are halfway done. For the White Pocket, I have a lot of work to do. I only posted two black and whites and the real stunners are still to come. This post is mostly about the Alstrom Point images. Alstrom Point is reached after a long drive over a dirt road and some four wheeling over a little slick rock. The location is a stunner though. You look out over Lake Powell and Gunsight Butte. We spent a single night there but even then it was amazing to see the different phases the view went through. I shot many different perspectives but the classical view is still what stood out. As always, click for bigger and for prints.

First sunset

Sunsight on gunsight butte.
Nikon D600. Nikon 24-85mm at 24mm, f/16, 1/25s, ISO 100. Grad ND filter.

The moon was out most of the night and very brightly illuminated the lake and rocks. The bright "star" in the middle is the planet Mars.

Moonlight illuminates Gunsight Butte and Lake Powell
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/2.8, 15s, ISO 1600.

The moonlight was so bright that it was easy to photograph the surroundings. I put my headlamp in my tent to obtain this:

moonlight lights the desert near Alstrom point.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/2.8, 15s, ISO 1600.

Close to sunrise, the milky way had come out very brightly and we had a lot of fun shooting images of it. I created two views - one vertical and one horizontal, by combining two exposures. One for the stars and one much longer for the foreground. You can already see the sunrise light starting to pour over. The bright star is the planet Venus in this case.

Milky Way and planet Venus rising over Gunsight Butte and Lake Powell
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600, Two exposures at 15s and 246s.

I also created a horizontal version:

Milky Way and planet Venus rising over Gunsight Butte and Lake Powell horizontal.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600, Two exposures at 15s and 221s.

Close to sunrise, the glow started to drown out the stars but the pinks were coming out in force.

Swoop.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/11, 1/6s, ISO 100.

I also created some panoramics of which this is my favorite. It really should be seen much bigger in the link.

The grey before dawn.
stitched from 4 images from Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/6s, ISO 100

Closer to sunrise, the glow turned red and orange:

Almost.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 20mm, f/11, 1/20s, ISO 100.

And finally the sun peeked over and gave a nice sunstar:
The moment.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 19mm, f/22, 1/20s, ISO 100.

Again, enjoy these images bigger in the links behind the images.

The Polar Vortex - Star Wings

When I was at the Bisti Badlands/De-Na-Zin Wilderness this April, we decided to leave our cameras for star trail images. The location we chose was the Wings, which is an amazing formation. We set up our cameras each in our own way. I chose a horizontal composition with the pole star being pointed at by one of the Wings. My reasoning for a horizontal image was that I could also turn it into a time lapse. I shot 30 seconds exposures on the built-in interval timer in the camera. I used my Tokina 16-28 mm lens at 16 mm, f/5.6 (to get more of the wings in focus) and ISO 1600. The battery lasted for a little over three hours. We left the cameras and hiked back to the cars to have dinner and returned for the cameras. These were extremely difficult to find as in the mean time the moon had set and this place is a complete maze. Finally with some help of a GPS waypoint and the red lights on my friends' Canon cameras, we were able to retrieve them. At home the fun started. I combined all 300-some raw images in Photoshop in batches of 10 using the lighten mode. I cloned out all the jet trails, sensor hot pixels, and a few distracting meteor trails. I then took the 30-some remaining images and combined them in Photoshop, again using lighten mode, but now using progressively increasing opacity. This created the comet effect you see below.

Moonlight illuminates The Wings formation and stars form trails at Bisti badlands.
This image is also on Flickr, Facebook, and Google+.

I also created some time-lapse movies using the individual frames. If you click through you can get to the HD versions that use a HTML5 (i.e. tablet and phone friendly) display. You can see a in the lens reflection from the very bright moon move in the frame. This disappeared in the composite image luckily.

And this is the same thing but without the pan and zoom of the previous.

I find it amazing how many planes you can see come by. The music was "composed" by me using Garageband.

Clouds and moon

... Buy a print.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8, f/8.0, 1/200s, ISO 200.
flickr link. Google+ post.

The lens I took this with got stolen from my luggage on a flight to Sweden recently. Pity as it was one of my favorites. Very sharp, very light, very affordable.

Solar eclipse 2012

We only had a partial one here and lacking any really high ND filters, I just made a simple pinhole camera to show the eclipse to the kids. I punched a approximately 1 mm hole in a metal cap of something and used that to project an image from the sun. Worked great as you can see below. Nice low-tech solution and to complete the low-techness I photographed it using my cellphone. Due to the way a pinhole camera works, the image is upside down (and mirrored but that is not that important here). We also did not have a full eclipse in the Denver area. The light was very interesting for a short while though with the sun mostly covered.

Sunset panoramas on the Great Sand Dunes

These are images I created during sunset on the great Sand Dunes. I have many non-panoramic images both from this sunset as well as the next day's sunrise. I haven't had time to work everything up but in the mean time thought I'd share these panoramic images with you all. This place is absolutely magical during sunset and sunrise and I would highly recommend heading out on the dune during those times. Hard to keep your camera from gathering sand inside though as during sunset the wind can blow quite hard.

All these panoramas are extremely high resolution and will print superbly at the largest sizes available. Prints will not have my logo on it (many people email me to ask). To get a better impression click on the image to get a much larger version.


Dune ridge sunset. 13 images at 18 mm, f/16, 1/30s, ISO 200, D300. Tripod. Buy a print. Clock on image for bigger.
This is right at sunset on a ridge near the high dune. I was photographing lines in the dune to the right and decided to make a quick panorama. You can clearly see my trail leading up to my position on the left.


Sunset on the Dune 2. Stitch from 10 handheld images at 18mm, f6.3, 1/50s, ISO 200, D300. Buy a print. Click on image for bigger.


Dusk on the dune. Stitch from 18 images, 16mm, f2.8, 1/20s, ISO 800, handheld. Buy a print. click the image for much bigger.
This is on the top of the high dune after sunset. The full moon is visible on the left. The wind was blowing like crazy.

Much more to come.

Fantastic pictures from Apollo 11

Like any geek I was obsessed with space and the moonlandings when I was a kid. This month the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moonlanding is celebrated. There is a fantastic gallery of images at the Big picture. Check it out.

Moonlight

I took quite a few pictures by moonlight in the park last weekend. The moon was superbright every night. One set of pictures I found interesting was an image I took at sunset (left), which turned out to have a companion taken later at night when only the moon was out(right):

Check out the larger sizes available on flickr to see the amazing detail captured at moonlight and the clear visibility of the snowcapped La Sal mountains in the background.
Another image I took in another location is the following:

The long exposure causes the stars to be streaked across the sky. Unfortunately I didn't think to walk to the other side of the canyon and try to shoot a north star shot. Clichéd, but fun. Another cool shot is the following one of Mozes and Zeus after sunset. The light here is coming from scattered light from the sun that was long below the horizon and light reflected by the moon visible in the upper right hand side of the shot.

More moonlight shots later when I get around to putting them on flickr.