Tag Archives: long exposure

Somewhere in South Dakota…

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The Drive Home…

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Sometimes, when you have hours and hours to drive solo, you just need to take breaks, and give yourself things to look forward to. Even with a metric crapload of music, podcasts and audiobooks at my disposal, it’s still nice to get out of the car once in a while. I’ll usually stop every couple hours to stretch, walk a bit, get a drink, or use the restroom. On the drive back from Montana, I knew I’d be driving through some pretty desolate areas during a new moon, which is great for us city folk who can’t get enough of the night sky. I kept one eye on the road, and one eye on the sky. As the sun went down, and the temperature dropped, I waited for the clouds to dissipate (or at least fade in my rearview mirror) to find a good spot to take a picture.

Get away from me!

I drove about 5 minutes away from I-90 to find an isolated spot to take a photo (somewhere off of the road where I wouldn’t be afraid of getting hit by a car or shot for trespassing… When you’re in the middle of nowhere, you start feeling like you’re doing something wrong, lurking with a camera in the dark). I threw on my sweater and beanie, and grabbed the camera. When it gets this dark out, it’s really hard to compose a good shot, so you just point it in the general direction (for me, usually towards the Milky Way), set the camera manually, and keep your fingers crossed as you wait and see what pops up on your LCD. You can then recompose and take another shot, but, even then, you might not get anything better. This was actually the first shot in the series that I took, and it turned out to be the best. (Also, I didn’t run into anybody else, so I didn’t need to explain why I was peepin’ on them stars.)

Hopefully everyone made it home from Thanksgiving safely!

p.s. 2 posts in under a week? Sorry about that! I promise we’ll be return to our regularly scheduled irregularity and sparsity.

Happy Thanksgiving from Ashland, Montana!

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Happy Thanksgiving From the Top of the World!

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Which is apparently, Ashland, Montana…

This year, I am thankful to be able to spend my Thanksgiving with my brother and my oldest sister in Ashland, Montana (which is about 2 hrs away from Billings, and far away from just about anywhere else in the US).  We were looking to get out and shoot some more photos tonight, but it ended up being under cloud cover, so here I am, updating my blog.

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All Along the Water Tower…

A couple years ago, I came to visit my brother, and he took me up to this water tower during the day, and I thought it’d be a good spot to take photos. So, my brother took me back here, and we shot some photos. I set up my camera for a timelapse, which I will hopefully be sharing sometime when I get back home, but here’s one of the shots below.
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Hopefully you area all having a wonderful time with family and friends! And maybe taking some wonderful photographs!

Stars over Montanny

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Nikon D700, 20mm f/2.8, 451s at f/13, ISO 100

Winter Roadtrip Photography…

It took 13 hrs to get from the Twin Cities to get to Ashland, Montana to visit my brother.  I had just gone out to Minnesota to go to Lutsen, MN for an annual snowboarding/ski trip with my group of friends in Minnesota, so I figured 13 hrs is much closer than the 24 hours it would have taken from Michigan.  Fortunately for me, this winter has been unusually mild, and so with no snow anywhere to be seen from Minnesota, through North Dakota, and into Montana, the drive was relatively easy.

Star Trails…

The optimal time to do star trail photos is if you are far away from civilization.  The amount of light pollution you get from being near lots of city lights makes it harder for you to see and capture the stars through the atmosphere.  Luckily for me, my brother is teaching on an Native American reservation far away from civilization and big city lights.  The nearest big city would be Billings, which is about 2 hrs away by car.  It was almost a full moon out, so I couldn’t really get any photos of the milky way, but what’s nice is that the moon lights the landscape, so as long as it’s a relatively still night (so you don’t have too many things moving, and being all blurry like bigfoot), then it works out pretty nice.  Things turned out pretty good.  I made adjustments on Lightroom, and only photoshopped out some power lines using content-aware fill, which worked well enough.

Anyway, enough talk, here are some photos:

Nikon D700, 50mm f/1.4D, 601s at f/16, ISO 200.

Overlook Saint Labre: Nikon D700, 20mm f/2.8, 20s at f/8.0, ISO 2500

The JV House: Nikon D700, 20mm f/2.8, 20s at f/8.0, ISO 2500

Also, feel free to leave any questions or comments below. 🙂

Hiking Long’s Peak: Redux

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Hiking Long’s Peak:

A slideshow

So, I made a slideshow for the Long’s Peak hike, which I blogged about in laborious detail here: https://jletookthis.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/longs-peak-my-first-fourteener/

I know some people appreciated the timelapse-slideshow I made of my Europe trip, so I decided to do the same to all the photos from the hike.  You can watch the video in HD on Vimeo, or in the embedded video below.

Long’s Peak: My First Fourteener from Justin Le on Vimeo.

In August of 2011, some friends and I attempted to hike Long’s Peak – one of the more well-known fourteeners in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. The journey is grueling, and reportedly perilous. Would we make it? Watch the video to find out!

I blogged and posted some photos of the hike a couple months ago (https://jletookthis.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/longs-peak-my-first-fourteener/), but then I decided I’d put together a timelapse-style slideshow of the hike with all the photos I took. These photos were shot in raw, and were taken straight out of camera with no editing or cropping, and batch exported to jpeg.

Gear: Nikon D700, Nikon 20mm f/2.8, Sigma 24-60mm f/2.8

Song: Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

http://vimeo.com/34117404

Long’s Peak: My First Fourteener

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Just over a month ago, I, and 6 of my friends, embarked upon a journey. A journey of modestly epic proportions. A journey that many have done before, but none of those people were us. We were going to hike Long’s Peak.

We had all traveled to Estes Park to celebrate, our friends, Rob and Julie’s wedding, and after the wedding, we took a week to enjoy Colorado.  During the week leading up to our hike, we had been discussing whether or not we would attempt Long’s Peak.  If you don’t know about Long’s Peak, it is the only fourteener (where the summit is above 14,000 ft above sea level) in Rocky Mountain National Park.  I’ll let wikipedia describe the Keyhole route for you.

The hike from the trailhead to the summit is 8 miles (13 km) each way. Most hikers begin before dawn in order to reach the summit and return below the tree line before frequent afternoon thunderstorms bring a risk of lightning strikes. The most difficult portion of the hike begins at the Boulder Field, 6.4 miles (10 km) into the hike. After scrambling over the boulders, hikers reach the Keyhole at 6.7 miles (10.5 km).

The following quarter of a mile involves a scramble along narrow ledges, many of which may have nearly sheer cliffs of 1,000 feet (305 m) or more just off the edge. The next portion of the hike includes climbing over 600 vertical feet (183 m) up the Trough before reaching the most exposed section of the hike, the Narrows. Just beyond the Narrows, the Notch signifies the beginning of the Homestretch, a steep climb to the football field-sized, flat summit. It is possible to camp out overnight in the Boulder Field (permit required) which makes for a less arduous two day hike, although this is fairly exposed to the elements. 57 people have died climbing or hiking Longs Peak. According to the National Park Service, 2 people, on average, die every year attempting to climb the mountain. In the summer of 2005 a Japanese climber was blown off a ledge after reaching the summit. On September 3, 2006 a man fell 800 feet (244 m) to his death when some rocks let go while he was descending the Loft route. Less experienced mountaineers are encouraged to use a guide for this summit to mitigate risk and increase the probability of a summit.

-From Wikipedia

CAUTION! ACHTUNG, BABY!  This is a very photo heavy post.  Click at your own risk.  There are dozens of photos in this post, so those on a 56k modem should probably join us in the 21st century and get some hi-speed internet! (j/k but, you know, seriously, it might take a while to load.)
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