Tony Grove

I spent the last day exploring Tony Grove in Utah with my parents. This place is full of opportunity, and I'm going to have to go back again soon! We hiked up the White Pine Lake trail about 2,000 feet to a giant meadow full of wildflowers for most of these pictures. Originally, I was going to scout out locations during the day and hike up White Pine Lake trail for fun. Then I was going to come back the next night to do some shooting. But then it turned out the day of my hike was the only clear night projected for the rest of the week. So I went on an 8 mile hike, came home for a few hours (during which I couldn't force myself to take a nap), and then went back at night for several hours of shooting. On the drive home, I counted 6 deer on the side of the road. But anyway, here are the fruits of my labor:

I tried out everything that I learned from the Brad Goldpaint workshop I went to in April. First I got some standard Milky Way/light painted shots.


Next I attempted another panorama, which seems to be a weakness of mine. I need to fix this one some more--I had to skew the bottom edges down and the Milky Way...well, if I don't tell, maybe no one will notice.


Next I finally tackled a star trail picture! I didn't get to practice this one at the workshop, because my intervalometer wasn't compatible with the camera I'd rented. Star trail pictures are time consuming--basically you have to take a sequence of 30-second exposures (about a half hour's worth) Unfortunately, two things went wrong during this process. First, about 17 minutes in, an idiot with a headlamp wandered onto the scene. A drunk, biking idiot. My Dad doesn't think a drunk person could navigate a rocky mountain trail on a bike in the dark. But he was slurring and talking to himself and weaving, so I stand by my theory. His headlamp was featured in about 5 shots, but only the landscape portion, which I didn't need. The 2nd thing that went wrong was the camera battery died about 25-ish minutes in and I didn't know about it because I was elsewhere in a camp chair passing time with my parents. Despite all that madness, I love my first star trail picture! (a composite of 45 images instead of 60)


And last of all: Composites. The sky portion was a 30-second exposure, and the landscape portion is a 2:30-minute exposure. The sky is a bit lighter in these pictures because the moon (4 days past full) was just starting to rise. Of course, it wasn't high enough to show ME what I was pointing my camera at. These are literally shots in the dark. Educated guesses. Tony Grove Lake is nestled in the center of the shots, kind of in a valley.


And that's all I've gotten done this summer. In a month, I'll be back to work and it's going to be hard to go out shooting. I'm hoping to go out at least two more times before the REAL madness begins!

Hardware Ranch

So after that Arches Workshop, I've been super excited to go out into the night again! I got a new camera and happened to be visiting my parents, where there happens to be a lot of dark sky nearby. So these shots were taken at Hardware Ranch, in Northern Utah. Most of the light painting is courtesy of my Dad. :)


This one is a panorama. It looks a little deformed because I didn't actually take enough pictures to cover everything--the end result fresh out of Photomerge was kind of bell shaped and I used the transform tool to drag the corners down a little. Either way, I'm still pretty happy with it.


I think I did the light painting on this one, before my Dad offered to help. When we went out there, I mostly wanted a chance to see how my new camera and lens performed on the night sky. I didn't plan anything at all, but it turned out that there were some nice trees and fences and stuff for foreground light painting.


The left image was taken around 11:45 pm or 12, and Milky Way core hadn't quite cleared the hillside yet. The image on the right was taken closer to 1 am.

When we got home (2am-ish), I noticed the constellation Scorpius at the end of the driveway--that's the constellation that kind of points to the brightest part of the Milky Way. So then I was curious to see if my camera could still pick out the Milky Way, even in the light polluted neighborhood. As it turns out, it could!



In fact, while I was taking the shot, I could vaguely see the Milky Way myself. Maybe because my eyes were used to the dark, or because I knew what to look for. It was cool. :)

All images taken with Canon EOS 6D, Rockinon 14mm F/2.8 lens. Settings: 30 seconds, ISO 4000, F/2.8

Arches Night Sky Workshop

Here some of the pictures I took at a workshop with Brad Goldpaint at Arches National Park. It was a really awesome experience, and I'm so excited to go out this summer and do some more.


This one is a panorama I took of Mesa Arch at Canyonlands. I tried to take a couple of other panoramas, but they didn't really work out. I think this one is probably the best picture I managed to take at the workshop.

I took these pictures on my own at about 5am the last day of the workshop. We didn't go out because it rained, but I woke up at 4am, saw stars out, and went charging off. I pulled off at the first parking lot I came to and got about an hour of shooting the Milky Way in before the sky started lighting up. That's why the sky looks so blue in these two shots!

We learned a lot about light painting at the workshop. Specifically, how you should move your flashlight when you're light painting, and also that you should always use incandescent flashlights. We were curious, so we tried taking a shot with an LED flashlight too.

Incandescent Light

LED Light

Finally, we also tried a lot of bracketing--taking the same shot a bunch of times at different exposures then putting them together in Photoshop. I have a LOT of bracketed shots left to go through--it's kind a time-consuming pain. Here's one of them: