The Big Photography Thread

[wjwilcox]

Flowers have been amazing this year:

]

 

Yes, they have, Mike, nice photo. And the daylilies are just getting started here, so there's lots to shoot in the coming weeks.

[KenElevenShadows]

I just came back from a trip to Arches National Park in South Utah, where I took some night sky long exposure photos of the various arches and everything else. And I took some day ones too, of course, but the night sky photos were especially fun.

 

 

Gazing up at Delicate Arch feels like peering into the infinite beyond, the magnificent arch acting as a portal for the center of our galaxy and beyond. For this photo, I waited a bit for the Milky Way to drift farther south, then lined it up underneath the arch for this image. I light painted the arch with a small Streamlight LED flashlight to keep the arch from going to silhouette. The Milky Way is easy to see on a moonless night such as this one.

 

Title: Door to Infinity

 

[KenElevenShadows]

This is a photo I took from my trip to West Virginia just a few weeks ago. This is a long exposure photo of Cathedral Falls, near the Gauley River. I didn't have much time to take photos. This one was a quick dash. I photographed my friend's wedding and was otherwise occupied with various stuff, but at least I managed to break away for a few minutes with this photo.

 

http://kenleephotography.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/1265westvirginia2014_kenlee-cathedralfalls-1siso100f22-960px.jpg

 

 

 

 

[KenElevenShadows]

And also this month - yes, I've been getting around some this month! - I went out to Borrego Springs, photographing the night sky with noted astronomer Dennis Mammana.

 

Between seeing this odd cloud formation and just having seen the new "Godzilla" movie, I couldn't help but create this shot!

 

http://kenleephotography.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/1437-20sf4iso1000-2014-06-17-1256am_kenlee_borregosprings-atomicbreath-960px.jpg

[Mike Martin]

^^^^^^^

Beautiful Ken.

 

So are you staying up for the Delta II rocket launch tonight?

[Joe Muscara]

Good grief, Ken.

 

 

Nice bugs, BTW Mike!

[KenElevenShadows]

Beautiful Ken.

 

So are you staying up for the Delta II rocket launch tonight?

 

Nope, went to sleep early. I imagine I would have had to have driven pretty far out to capture that, but who knows.

 

Thanks for the kind words, Mike and Joe and everyone!

[Mike Martin]

I was going to try to shoot the launch. I'm out in LA and have a friend that has a hilltop view of the valley. He's into photography like me and I was going to go to his place at 2am to get ready to shoot the launch. He texted me at 1:30am and said that everything was completely fogged over. No visibility at all. Maybe next time...

[wjwilcox]

Wonderful photos, Ken. And all I shoot are silly trains and flowers....

[KenElevenShadows]

I was going to try to shoot the launch. I'm out in LA and have a friend that has a hilltop view of the valley. He's into photography like me and I was going to go to his place at 2am to get ready to shoot the launch. He texted me at 1:30am and said that everything was completely fogged over. No visibility at all. Maybe next time...

 

Oh well. We have had a lot of early morning fog, so it probably moved in early.

 

My last evening in Utah was cloudy, windy, and rainy. Those are three elements of weather that I intensely dislike when photographing...especially in the desert when you get pelted by sand. I went to sleep early.

 

The night before, though, I literally stayed out all night, even shooting sunrise photos. I got back to the motel when they were serving breakfast.

[KenElevenShadows]

Wonderful photos, Ken. And all I shoot are silly trains and flowers....

 

Trains and flowers rule.

 

Thanks!

[RABid]

Ken - When is the best time to shoot pictures of the night sky while focusing on the galaxy? In other words, what month or season is the earth between the sun and the center of the galaxy?

[Brettymike]

Wonderful photos, Ken. And all I shoot are silly trains and flowers....

 

Trains and flowers rule.

 

Thanks!

 

Thumbs up in agreement here Ken - anything rules.

 

Brett

[KenElevenShadows]

Ken - When is the best time to shoot pictures of the night sky while focusing on the galaxy? In other words, what month or season is the earth between the sun and the center of the galaxy?

 

Great question.

 

But just a warning, though. It's addictive. You start photographing Milky Ways, and you are addicted to that sense of wonder and the images that you get.

 

If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, the best time to photograph the Milky Way, particularly the gaseous clouds, is in the late spring or during the summer when the moon is not out and you are as far away from light pollution as you can get. You want to look toward approximately SE to south, depending on the time of night and the month.

 

If you are in the Southern Hemisphere, you can photograph the Milky Way all year round, although obviously, avoiding light still applies (no moon, as little light pollution as possible).

 

Ideally, you also want very low humidity and high elevation. A great place to photograph the Milky Way in California is up in the mountains, such as the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest at 11000 feet in elevation or some of the other mountains. In South America, the Atacama Desert in Chile is outstanding.

 

Let your eyes adjust to the dark, and you will be able to readily see it.

 

The Milky Way will not look like a lot of the photographs that you see. That is because a camera with a high ISO, wide aperture, and a long exposure is considerably more sensitive to light than your eyes are. No matter, it's still an astounding sight to behold, and a lot of fun to photograph.

[KenElevenShadows]

http://kenleephotography.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/1589kenlee_borregosprings14-elephantmilkyway-20sf28iso4000-2014-06-18-1235am-960px.jpg

 

This has some of the qualifications. Not everything has to be ideal, but every little bit helps.

 

-This is taken in Borrego Springs. It's not that high in elevation, but it is dry.

 

-And it's fairly dark considering one is shooting in a small town, but as you can see in the horizon, there's still plenty of light pollution. However, there's not much else around, and it's a designated Dark Sky Community.

 

-I'm also not facing south, where the bulk of the gaseous clouds are.

 

And remember, you don't have to have the ideal situation to get a cool shot. The more of those variables, the better, of course, but I want to emphasize that you don't need to get hung up on having every single item "checked".

 

 

[Mike Warren]

Ken, how did you expose that shot to get enough light without trails? Is it multiple shots realigned in post?

[Mike Martin]

That was going to be my question. You said wide aperture and long exposure but you can't do too long otherwise you'll get trails.

[KenElevenShadows]

Long exposure is relative, of course. I mean, sure, it's still a long exposure, but it's a short long exposure.

 

And yeah, I know that's the same as saying "jumbo shrimp".

 

Among night sky photographers, there's something called "The 500 Rule". It really should be called a guideline. I don't like rules.

 

Here's how it goes:

500 ÷ focal length = exposure length

 

So if you have a 24mm lens, you could theoretically shoot up to about 20 seconds before there is really overt trailing.

 

500 ÷ 24mm = 20.8333 seconds

500 ÷ 14mm = 35.7142 seconds

 

Now this is all sort of based on what is "acceptable" star trailing for many people. For me, as I shoot at a 14mm focal length most of the time, if I followed this, I could supposedly shoot as long as 35 seconds before overt trailing sets in. And occasionally, I do shoot at 30 seconds. But to me, the stars still look kinda "smeared", so at 14mm, I usually shoot at 20 seconds, which looks more like pinpoints to me.

 

Compounding this is that the stars tend to "move" more the farther you get from the North Celestial Pole (facing north, in other words). And I do notice this in the photos. Sometimes, I'll shoot at 15 seconds.

 

Unfortunately, there's a trade-off with, uh, shorter long exposures: less light. You can compensate for this in two ways:

1.) wider aperture

2.) higher ISO.

 

Wider aperture works really well...except that it's harder to focus because you have a considerably narrower depth of field. Better get that focus just right if you are at some ridiculous thing like f/1.2 or f/1.4!

 

Higher aperture works really well...except that it increases noise. Gotta find the sweet spot with that. With a full frame, you can shoot between ISO 1000-5000 and not pick up too much noise. With a smaller sensor, maybe you can shoot between ISO 800-2500. Depends on your camera and the amount of light you have coming in and atmospheric conditions and what you want and...

[KenElevenShadows]

I was toying around getting an equatorial mount at some point. But that also means I'd need to improve my Photoshop skills noticeably since that would require blending in foregrounds. An equatorial mount will basically follow the stars, allowing you to get beautiful, pinpoint stars via a longer exposure than through the method I do it, resulting in more vibrant Milky Ways. Of course, since the mount is moving the camera, the foreground would blur, so you have to take a separate photo of the foreground and then blend that in via Photoshop. At least, I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

[KenElevenShadows]

And a word about "long exposure". Opinions differ on what constitutes a long exposure, but certainly five, ten, twenty seconds absolutely counts as long exposure photography. Compared to, say, shooting star trails, Milky Way shots are "short". But they're still long exposure, just as a shot of a waterfall with an exposure of one second is considered a long exposure as well.

[wjwilcox]

And now for something completely different:

 

Nose job by wjw0608, on Flickr

 

Shaw Mausoleum stained glass and fall colors by wjw0608, on Flickr

[KenElevenShadows]

Nice! ^^^ I like the title of the first one, too!!!

[xKnuckles]

Those trains seem to be kissing! Great photo! Ditto the window, flowers, stars, waterfall & insects..... Particularly like the insects (which is a bit of a surprise...... Had no idea a FLY could be so beautiful!!)

 

Whatever next?

 

[wjwilcox]

Whatever next?

 

How 'bout Legos, lilies and onions? (Oh, my!):

 

Lego ducks by wjw0608, on Flickr

 

Water lilies by wjw0608, on Flickr

 

Mirror, mirror.... by wjw0608, on Flickr

 

Water lily by wjw0608, on Flickr

[Mike Martin]

Nice shots Wilcox

 

 

Everyone get some Fireworks shots tonight.

[xKnuckles]

LOL Bill!! Ha Ha ha - don't think ANYONE would have EVER guessed Lego ducks! You must be quackers to posess such a thing..... But what absolutely gorgeous photos. Think I like the Mirror mirror one best, although I have no idea why....

[xKnuckles]

Not too much in the way of fireworks going on round here tonight, Mike. However, I can supply some flierworks instead.....

 

This was taken recently out at sea off of the north coast of Scotland, on my trusty iPad. It is not zoomed or cropped.

 

Coastguard Rescue by xxKnuckles, on Flickr

[Mike Martin]

Perhaps the best iPhoto I've ever seen. Wow.

[wjwilcox]

Not too much in the way of fireworks going on round here tonight, Mike. However, I can supply some flierworks instead.....

 

This was taken recently out at sea off of the north coast of Scotland, on my trusty iPad. It is not zoomed or cropped.

 

Pretty darned epic, xK.

[RichieP_MechE]

You weren't being rescued, were you Knuckles? Great shot!

 

Everyone get some Fireworks shots tonight.

From my hometown's celebration last night:

 

Small Town Celebration by rpantaleo, on Flickr