Astronomy Events

I had the opportunity to photograph a couple of astronomy events last year.  First was the Perseid meteor shower.  I happen to be in Albuquerque and found this out of the way place.  (Well I thought it was but found that many people started showing up at the same location.  It was not that bad and was kind of fun.)

I was getting more shots of airplanes crossing than meteors.

These are a couple of meteors.

And some general night shots.

The second was the lunar eclipse and I really need to get a remove release.

Yosemite Oct 2014

Ok, this has been a while.  I've not posted travel shots here since Apple stopped supporting Aperture.  Well that is a poor excuse, but I did have trouble converting to a new workflow.  Thus many, many pictures and a new processing method and I think I'm starting to get into things again.

Anyway, I will be posting back travel as I get things finished but I don't think I'll post things in order.  That is just too organized for me.

So what have I replaced Aperture with?  For now it is DxO Optics Pro 10.  It seems to have matured since I purchased it at Pro 8 or I have started to get used to how it does things, either way I've started to learn it.

So this was our trip to Yosemite in October 2014.  This was the 3rd year of the 4 year drought and we did not get back to the same areas in 2015.

So this is Half Dome from Glacier Point.  This was actually my first time to Glacier Point which is surprising since we go to Yosemite almost every year.  This second picture is of Vernal Falls.  I do not have a good idea about how the drought affected this falls but we will see later how small it has become since we hiked there later that weekend.

 

These two are Nevada Falls.  Close up and of the valley.  These falls are right above Vernal and you can see the edge of Vernal in the second picture.

Now we come to Bridalveil Falls.  Alway like stopping here for a short visit but the last two times our daughter loves to climb on the rocks and hike all the way to under the falls.

These last ones I am standing basically under the falls.

This is now at Vernal Falls.

The second one is of the upper lake above Vernal and the water flow over the rocks is from the Nevada Falls.

Ok picture of a Sequoia.

Lastly, we stay at Yosemite Lakes, in a Yurt.  Interesting stay, pretty nice, rustic but not too much.  But it did allow me to get out and take some night shots.  The Yurt under the stars.

Mono Lake area night shots

I would love to get out more to do this and my errors prove it.  Here are two shots from Mono Lake of the Milky Way.  I would have loved to venture to the Tufa's area and got them into the picture but I forgot my jacket and more important a flashlight.  I ended up using my iPhone for a light and it only had 20% battery.  (Yes inexperience lead to unprepared.  I guess the worst part was those things where in my large camera bag, just not the travel one that I brought with me.)

Both of these are from the South Tufa parking area looking South, thus Mono Lake is at my back.

Here was a quick shot from the Mammoth Lake vista point.  I wanted to do some testing and here was close since we where staying in Mammoth Lake.  (Also I normally do not get spooked but this place was spooky.)

This last one is interesting and I did not really think it would come out very well since the night was young and I had just pulled off of Hwy 395 toward Convict Lake across from the Mammoth Lake/Yosemite airport.

We where heading back from Mono Lake and it was getting toward evening and I wanted to show my wife and daughter what I do for the night shots.  They have seen the pictures but I wanted them to see the sky also.

My daughters first reaction was 'this is cool' and her, her friend and my wife all watches as the Milky Way got brighter.  Thus I figured I should just grab my tripod and shot a couple of pictures to give them a reference to what my pictures show and what they have seen.

Well I had to crop foreground out since it was blown out because the airport beacon would blast the area every few seconds with light, remember the airport is at my back.  Anyway, when we go back, I'll have to take the road further to Convict Lake to get out of the light.

So this was a special picture and I think I even caught a couple of meteors in it.

Sea Ranch Night

Had a nice trip up to Sea Ranch along the California coast and was fortunate enough to get a clear night to try some night photography.  Here is a shot off the balcony of the house pointing South of the Milky Way.  The glow is the San Francisco bay area about 100 miles away.

This next picture is an attempt at doing a night panorama.  This is mostly the Southern sky to about overhead.  There is some parallax bending from the 14mm lens.  There was approximately 10 of the 26 shots used to generate this portion.  The extreme edges tend to show more distortion.

All picture shot at 14mm on a DX sensor at 30 seconds, ISO 1000.

Here is actually a better panoramic build.  I tried fisheye thus giving a bit of vignetting in the upper corners.  I cropped most of it out but did not want to loose too much of the bottom track.