Photographer’s Notes Went back to Mt Rainier last night with and old and a new friend to try to improve on my time-lapse of the Milky Way setting over the mountain.
This was my friends’ virgin star photography time-lapse experience. What could possibly go wrong?
One of my friends, sadly the one who drove, is navigationally challenged and made a wrong turn from a highway that leads straight to our destination. So we were later than I’d hoped getting to the mountain. Being their first time at it, they had trouble getting all 10 things right at the same time: 1) ISO; 2) Aperture; 3) Shutter; 4) High ISO noise reduction – off; 5) Long exposure noise reduction – off; 6) Camera-back display – off; 7) Interval timer set to 480 frames – 1 every 30 seconds; 8) Framing the scene from their tripod mounted camera; 9) Focus on the stars; and 10) Flash –off, damn it. It took them a couple of hours fiddling with camera features they rarely, if ever, use.
But in the end, both were successful … splendidly successful compared with their expectations. They both got some stunning stills. They both got hundreds of time-lapse originals. And all had a good time.
Their next challenge, and they haven’t fully internalized this yet, they need software to stitch together the time-lapse. Learning for another day.
To those who may wish they could have visited planet Earth … this setting was one of our most beautiful mountains. And our effort and sacrifice to capture it photographically, was illustrative of our specie's desire to succeed, to overcome all odds, to capture the beauty of the human spirit and the beauty of Gaia, our symbiotic relationship with 'Mother Earth,' now sadly gone forever.
Post Processing • Convert from RAW (Adobe Camera Raw)
• Crop (PSCC)
• Resize (OnOne Perfect Resize)
• Sharpen (PSCC High Pass Overlay Layer)
• Save for Web (PSCC)
Camera Data • Date: 2014.08.23
• Camera: Nikon D800E
• Lens: Nikon AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 G ED
• ISO: 3200
• Aperture: f/2.8
• Shutter: 20 Seconds
The original resolution of this photo was 7360 x 4912. At 800 x 534 DPC submission resolution is a CRIME AGAINST NATURE!
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Color Saturation and Hue - colors are beautifully rendered both in saturation and white balance.
Brightness and contrast: excellent job of keeping detail in the shadows, and not blowing out the highlights.
Focus and depth of field: tack sharp image, depth of field is the full depth of the image which is necessary for this scene.
Subjective: this image took the red ribbon, so any negatives are nit picking at best. I find it fascinating that even at 20 seconds, star trails start to form. This leaves me wondering if some viewers saw it as softness, rather than the movement of plant earth? I love the rendering of the mountains, but the brightness of the sky above, appears to have erased some of the stars. The lighter sky also competes with the mountain, just a little bit, for attention. When I look away and look back, my eye goes first to the light area, and then to mountains and stars.
Summary - this is an excellent image. I had to work to find anything to suggest. I would happily hang this on my wall.
Greetings From The Late Great Planet Earth
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