The Photographers' Corner - 2021 to ?

[street]

Wanted to share a few wildlife pictures from the ranch from this past week. As far as a photographer I'm not, I use a spotting scope and phone camera.

 

[Ronstar]

Whoa those are some bigguns!

 

[Gotadimple]

This was last week when cold weather finally came to the Seattle area. Tiger Mountain (east of Seattle) as a fog bank rolls in from the west and the sun rises.

 

[tutan]

Last month to the Southeast Utah. Weather was still pretty good.

 

[tutan]

Faaa airport at dusk.

 

[Ronstar]

Bison in Buffalo Rock State Park, Illinois hunkering down in the snow.

 

[Fotodog]

Ronstar, that’s a fantastic shot, portfolio worthy. Well done!

 

[audreyh1]

This place should be in every landscape photographers' bucket list, the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland. It's also a great place to hike. It's one of the most scenic places on the planet. I used the AI voice to do the voice-overs.

Beautiful! Wow, I can’t believe how nice the voice is.

 

[audreyh1]

Here is an attachment you can get for binoculars or spotting scope. It just pushes on the scope and your camera fits in the plastic hold that aligns. I hope that helped you out and has really been fun for me to use. I hope the picture can tell the story of how it works. One side camera, flip it, the other side push on the scope etc.

We caught up with an old friend, and he travels in his motorhome with a 16” telescope with tracking mount. And he has an attachment for his iPhone13 and gets amazing pictures of space objects!

 

[audreyh1]

I need to learn more about astrophotography. The night sky was notably stunning when we were on vacation in the middle of the Pacific ocean off of the Society Islands, and then at a resort on an inactive volcano in Tanzania. I tried one shot, and it's just a blur. Heck, I'd love to just be able to capture a long exposure of the fireflies in our backyard during their peak, it's so beautiful and irenic.



I guess I have at least one hobby lined up for retirement!

Tripod essential.

Very wide angle fast lens like 20mm or wider on a full frame camera.

Exposures then aren’t super long, but still long. Yet short compared to the earth’s rotation. Remote shutter release recommended.

You need a low noise camera too.

Lots of online tutorials.

Chisos basin in Big Bend National Park in August is a favorite. One of the very best dark skies in the US, plus Perseid meteor shower.

 

[street]

Bison in Buffalo Rock State Park, Illinois hunkering down in the snow.

Darn, that is another great Bison photo!!! I just don't have the equipment to take quality picture and not sure I will ever get into it. But when I see some of the fine photo work being done, it does make me think about it.

Great photo Ron and thank you again for sharing your work.

 

[explanade]

Tripod essential.

Very wide angle fast lens like 20mm or wider on a full frame camera.

Exposures then aren’t super long, but still long. Yet short compared to the earth’s rotation. Remote shutter release recommended.

You need a low noise camera too.

Lots of online tutorials.

Chisos basin in Big Bend National Park in August is a favorite. One of the very best dark skies in the US, plus Perseid meteor shower.

I once stayed in Tekapo (near the shores of Lake Tekapo). When I booked the stay, I didn't know Tekapo was one of the premier Dark Sky reserves in the world.

They have an observatory near town and you can take a tour which starts at like 11 PM where they take you up to the observatory and they will hook up your DLSR to the telescope and take some pictures for you.

I didn't do the tour. The camera I had was new at the time, with a new lens mount, so it was unlikely they would be able to hook it to their telescope.

But the lodging had a terrace with clear views of the nearby mountains and the sky and I decided what the heck, might as well see what I can get.

Got some pretty good pictures, had a 20 mm F1.8 which I used but the best pictures I got were with the aperture stopped down to around 5.6, 6.3, 8 and all the exposures were short, so there's very little sign of star trails and got relatively low ASA settings, some under 1000.

I don't think I got any recognizable constellations but it's amazing how many stars showed up with exposures of a few seconds. I couldn't see them that well with the naked eye but if you open the shutter long enough, they appear in the shots.

 

[audreyh1]

There are two types of night sky photography. One is of celestial objects and requires a telescope. The other is more of a landscape of the night sky and can be equally rewarding. You need a really wide angle lens to capture the Milky Way for example. Or just a sky full of stars with mountains silhouetted against it or reflected in an ocean or lake. Goldpaint Photography has a lot of great examples of the latter. https://store.goldpaintphotography.com/

In a really dark sky area where millions of stars are visible it becomes much harder to pick out the constellations, ha ha.

 

[Ronstar]

I once stayed in Tekapo (near the shores of Lake Tekapo). When I booked the stay, I didn't know Tekapo was one of the premier Dark Sky reserves in the world.

They have an observatory near town and you can take a tour which starts at like 11 PM where they take you up to the observatory and they will hook up your DLSR to the telescope and take some pictures for you.

I didn't do the tour. The camera I had was new at the time, with a new lens mount, so it was unlikely they would be able to hook it to their telescope.

But the lodging had a terrace with clear views of the nearby mountains and the sky and I decided what the heck, might as well see what I can get.

Got some pretty good pictures, had a 20 mm F1.8 which I used but the best pictures I got were with the aperture stopped down to around 5.6, 6.3, 8 and all the exposures were short, so there's very little sign of star trails and got relatively low ASA settings, some under 1000.

I don't think I got any recognizable constellations but it's amazing how many stars showed up with exposures of a few seconds. I couldn't see them that well with the naked eye but if you open the shutter long enough, they appear in the shots.

My best shot of the Milky Way was with my 20mm 1.8 at 30 secs, F2.0, ISO 2000, 2/3 EV. Central Wisconsin late summer, no lights anywhere in sight. Just sitting around drinking beer in a campground.

A 20mm F1.8 can really get the Milky Way.

 

[Ronstar]

There are two types of night sky photography. One is of celestial objects and requires a telescope. The other is more of a landscape of the night sky and can be equally rewarding. You need a really wide angle lens to capture the Milky Way for example. Or just a sky full of stars with mountains silhouetted against it or reflected in an ocean or lake. Goldpaint Photography has a lot of great examples of the latter. https://store.goldpaintphotography.com/

In a really dark sky area where millions of stars are visible it becomes much harder to pick out the constellations, ha ha.

Thanks for the link. Some stellar shots there. I'd love to take that shot of Delicate Arch.

 

[folivier]

street, it's more the photographer than the equipment. Knowing your equipment, which settings to use, and having the ability to envision your photograph before you touch the shutter is what is most important. A great photographer with a cheap camera can take a better photo than a mediocre person with expensive equipment.
And you need to be there. In the snowstorm with the bison. Freezing your *uts off. For maybe hours. Then you might get a chance to take that photograph when the bison looks at you. Thinking what the heck are you doing here?

 

[explanade]

Thanks for the link. Some stellar shots there. I'd love to take that shot of Delicate Arch.

I went to a talk and slide show by a guy who did those kinds of shots all the time.

He talked about light painting. He'd have flashlights with some color filter and he said we waves it around on a foreground object like that arch while taking a long exposure of the sky.

He even said some light pollution in the distance could make your astro shots interesting.

But the thing that really discouraged me, he said you have to go not just after sun down but like 10 or 11 PM and drive 50-75 miles from big metro areas to be able to capture these types of shots.

No interest in doing anything like that.

 

[Ronstar]

I went to a talk and slide show by a guy who did those kinds of shots all the time.

He talked about light painting. He'd have flashlights with some color filter and he said we waves it around on a foreground object like that arch while taking a long exposure of the sky.

He even said some light pollution in the distance could make your astro shots interesting.

But the thing that really discouraged me, he said you have to go not just after sun down but like 10 or 11 PM and drive 50-75 miles from big metro areas to be able to capture these types of shots.

No interest in doing anything like that.

Light painting really makes for some great photos. I took a workshop from Xavier Nunez in Chicago. I found light painting to be difficult. Can't dwell on a certain feature while painting or that part will be overexposed. Can't even repaint a certain area. How are you supposed to remember where you painted and where you didn't? I sucked at light painting.

But this guy has it nailed.https://www.nuez.com

 

[audreyh1]

Thanks for the link. Some stellar shots there. I'd love to take that shot of Delicate Arch.

He does some neat time lapse photography too. I may take a workshop one of these days.

 

[audreyh1]

I went to a talk and slide show by a guy who did those kinds of shots all the time.

But the thing that really discouraged me, he said you have to go not just after sun down but like 10 or 11 PM and drive 50-75 miles from big metro areas to be able to capture these types of shots.

No interest in doing anything like that.

West Texas you can stay in dark sky locations, and shoot right where you are or drive a short way. In Big Bend I was right there. Milky Way was up maybe an hour after sunset. I got up one or two nights at 3-4am. No big deal because it was a short walk from our lodging. Davis Mountains area is excellent too.

 

[explanade]

It just depends on what you want to do. People spend a fortune on long lenses for photographing birds and they apparently have to wait a long time to get certain shots.

No interest in doing that.

I wouldn't mind photographing the aurora borealis but not enough to go to some cold place in the winter.

Not interested in going to the Antarctic.

I remember researching a trip to Torres del Paine. Learned that you had to take some 2-3 hour bus ride from the airport to go to some remote area. Aside from the scenery of that one mountain, not much to do there and weather conditions might be extreme, like very heavy winds which might prevent you from hiking from the lodgings to the lookouts.

OK, there are plenty of beautiful mountains and many of them are much easier to reach and you're not going to some desolate place.

You can enjoy the Alps for instance and be near amenities

 

[tutan]

Collecting food at low tide.

 

[tutan]

Sunset over Rarotonga lagoon.

 

[Ronstar]

^great photos!!

 

[tutan]

Thank you. It is hard to miss or screw up scenes of obvious beauty. A South Pacific island lagoon is just mesmerizing. All I had to do was keeping the horizon horizontal.
Waxing crescent moon in this one a week ago.