Tag Archives: long exposure

#52weekproject: Week 24: Moonset over the Pacific

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52WP-W24 Gold Bluffs Moonset

 

 

Taken on Tuesday, September 30, 2014, while camping at Gold Bluffs Beach Campground (near Orick, CA, in the Redwoods National Park).

 

This is one of the frames I took while attempting a timelapse of the milky way over the ocean. Using an iphone app called The Photographer’s Ephemeris, I was able to plan ahead and figure out where and when the moon would be setting. I took a walk down the beach from my campsite to where I had eaten breakfast on a log earlier that day. That spot was key since it gave me a place to hang out while I waited for my timelapse to run, and I thought would be foreground for a few pictures. The key to nice milky way shots is to have really dark and clear skies. Which means, being far away from any city lights or any light pollution, no moon, and low humidity. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the weather was pretty warm, and humid, so the Milky Way was not super bright, but it was definitely there. (Ideally, it’s best when the weather is colder and the atmosphere can’t hold much moisture, but then you have to deal with battery issues, and trying to stay warm, but I digress.)

I’m pretty happy with this photo, but would have liked to have spent more time there, since I only had a few hours to work with. (I was only up until around 2am since the following morning I needed to pack up and leave my campsite before 8am so I could drive 9 hours to Fresno to meet up with my brother and sister.)

 

Also, here’s a photo of me setting up this photo:

52WP-W24 Gold Bluffs Moonset bts

#52weekproject – Week 23: Mazama Village Campgrounds

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Crater Lake, Oregon

52wp-W23 Crater Lake Mazama Campground 2014-09-27

Taken Friday, September 26, 2014.

Drove into Crater Lake National Park, well after sundown. After we set up our tents, I decided to set up my cameras for some long exposure timelapses of the sky, even though I was kind of exhausted. Really wanted to do this timelapse over Crater Lake, but driving back up those switchbacks in the dark from the campground didn’t seem appealing. Unfortunately, putting off til tomorrow what could have been done that day came back to bite me, as the following night was cloudy, and windy, so unfortunately, I didn’t end up getting any starscapes over Crater Lake. Looks like I’ll have to go back out to some other time!

I did crop the photo a bit to balance the image, and cut out the truck and the light from the bathroom. And, since I did do a timelapse with this, I was also able to stack the photos into a startrails photo. Using a different method than I have before, I stacked these in photoshop, grouped them as a smart object, and set the Stack Mode to median, which I think gave a more pleasant result than I typically get (the trails usually look more jagged and noisy). I’m still learning some of the post-processing on these photos, but overall, it’s pretty solid! Let me know what you think, or if you have any tips, or tutorials to share!

Mazama Village Startrails stacked

#52weekproject: Week 19: State Street Bridge

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State St Bridge Square

 

Week 19: State Street Bridge

Taken Sunday, August 10th, 2014 in downtown Chicago.

After catching up with my friend Joanna the night before, she mentioned that she there happened to be some construction work on the waterfront walkway and that the State Street bridge was raised up during that time. Even though I have been in the city for over 2 years now, I can’t recall ever seeing one of these main bridges up, so I knew I had to go check it out.

Fortunately, it was not raining by the time I went for a wander downtown, but it was misty and the fog had rolled in. I was half-worried the clouds would just open up and start pouring, but I’m glad it didn’t. I ended up with a few shots I liked, but since I was looking for a square image, this one seemed to fit the bill the best. Taken from the Dearborn Street Bridge, shooting east. I’ll post a few more photos below.

Fun Fact:

The State Street bridge is also known as the Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Bridge, in honor of the World War II defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (Which is a peninsula and island in the Philippines which played an important role in World War II).

 

 

52WP - Week 19 State Street Straight Up

52WP - Week 19 State St 4

52WP - Week 19 southwest

#52weekproject: Week 11 – The Lampost and the Lighthouse

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Week 11: The Lamppost and the Lighthouse

Lamppost Painting

Taken on Tuesday, May 6th, 2014. Took the bus down to Adler Planetarium after work on a day that was windier and colder than it seemed. I was looking for a sunset picture of the skyline, but since I had shown up way before dusk, I decided to try a few different things, which is what this project is all about. The sunset photo was a little pedestrian, so it doesn’t get top billing this week. (Also, full disclosure, it was super windy and cold by the lake, and I was losing feeling in my fingers so I wanted to skedaddle before the sky got interesting enough for a great skyline pic.)

This photo is pretty simple. Make the horizontal things horizontal, the vertical things vertical. Compose the elements in a visually appealing way. Find some balance in the subject. Have an interesting foreground, midground and background. The hard part was composing this with an ND3 filter on it, which only allows 1/1024th of the light through (but it gave me the ability to make this a long exposure).

One of the things I like about this photo is that it has a painting like quality to it with the choppy water smoothed out with the long exposure. It actually has some semblance to my desktop wallpaper that I found that is based on Rene Magritte’s Son of Man painting (that you may recall from the newer-but-not-that-new Thomas Crown Affair movie). Here’s that wallpaper:

Also, here’s the other photo that didn’t make the cut:

The Chicago Skyline at Sunset(ish)

Sunset skyline

It’s amazing how you can get 2 completely different photos just 30 minutes and 50 yards from each other.