September, 2005

Based on feedback, I updated this post to have a small image and a bigger link.

This was shot at sunrise during the last day of our trip, Sunday morning. We drove up to 12000 feet in a rocky road to catch sunrise. When you are at the edge of the cliff looking towards the magnificient Owens valley and the sun peers through the mountains, nothing in the world can quite match that.

It was 25 deg F, colder than my body can really take it. I was completely breathless at this point in time and struggling, but the light was so gorgeous. I have a few good shots from here, but I will start off with a panorama.

This place on top is called the Locked Gate and if you look closely, you will observe more buildings way up on top – researchers!

Steve's advise to us for scenes like this was simple. You are not going to convey anything if you use a wide angle lens. You have to isolate portions of the scenery and work the shadows. I shot many long telephoto shots, but also did a panorama which tries to convey the magnitude of the area and the beautiful side light hitting it.

I have never printed a panorama in my life before. I have done quite a bit of them which you can find here. We have a critique session coming up for the workshop next week, so I am going to print this (a cropped version) for the critique. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Full sized panorama can be seen here

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We reached the UC high altitude research center up in White Mountains by 5 pm on Friday. After a dinner at 6 pm, we decided to drive up to Patriach grove to catch some star trails.

In this trip, Mike Soo had done something very interesting. He had brought along his White Lightning 3200 studio strobe and battery pack with him .

It was 35 deg F, a very cold windchill at about 11,000+ feet. 4 layered clothing and still freezing our butt off, we setup our cameras and metered by firing the strobe and metered the tree.

Steve Kiser had taught us to watch for the North Star and point our cameras at that since that is when you get the full circular motion of the stars.

We wanted to do a 2-3 hour exposure, but cold, possible battery life and general sleeplessness cut it short to a 60 min exposure .

Update:

This wasn't a 60 min exposure. It was a 30 min exposure, the EXIF was correct. D70, by design, cut the exposure at 30th minute. I was sitting in the car and I did not notice it at all.

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Sunset in Don Edwards refuge.

Thanks to Dave Kapp, Mike Wong and Durgi, I now own a 50 mm f/1.4 .

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