Crow Town 14mm
This image was taken an hour or so before the Pano shots were done, and it's a single shot with the D800 and my Rokinon 14mm SP Lens. We were very happy with the light placements we chose to illuminate the rocks and adobe hut. We set up three LLL LCD panels on tripods, and amazingly the batteries held up through three hours of 21 degree F temperature. A beautiful night!!
Crow Town Movie Set
Rick and I ventured to BBSP to look for locations to photograph the Milky Way, and after using PhotoPills to determine the position of everything, we decided to shoot here. We are both very glad that we chose this location since it turned out to be spectacular! We arrived at 3:30 AM and braved the 21 degree temperature while we set up our lights and waited for the Milky Way to be in the optimal position. We hardly noticed the cold when we climbed up to our predetermined camera positions and began to gaze upon the stunning night sky. After a series of 14mm shots, Rick mounted his Tamron 35mm lens on his D850 and began to shoot the preset camera positions on his Pano Rail system. This image is five shots in portrait mode, and was the last series taken before the sun crept over the horizon and turned the next series into an unusable blue sky that drowned out the Milky Way. Rick gets all the credit for manipulating the D850, but I was there too, so I helped!! Can't wait to get back to a dark sky location, and continue capturing as much as the dark of night has to offer!!
Milky Way over Tufa
Mono Lake Tufa makes a nice foreground for night images. The only problem we had here is that this area is on the inbound flight path for several airports in this part of California ! We shot a large number of images, and this one has the fewest airplane lights we saw all evening!
Movie Road, Lone Pine, California
My brother, Rick, and I were able to make a brief trip to the Lone Pine area to work on star photography, and wound up in the same area two nights in a row. Slightly different angles each night, and we were pleased to see as much Milky Way as possible this time of the year. Great learning experience with Light Painting and star capture.