This is a curvy section of a dedicated bike route near the river in Reno. Its part of my running route, only minutes away from my house and I’ve been meaning to shoot it for some time now. My goal is to shoot more urban star trails shots so why not start with this….

Once funny note about this shot: During the exposure some young teens walked the path (right into my frame) and upon realizing that there was someone sitting motionless in the shadows, they turned white and sprinted away in the direction they came from. The whole thing happened so fast that they didn’t show up in my frame

This photo was taken in early summer. The thing that looks like a railroad track is actually a large wooden flume.

Specs: Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm 2.8, f/4 at ISO 640. 16 frames stacked at 4 mins each = 1 hour total exposure. I lit the “track” from underneath using a gelled flashlight. It was EXTREMELY dark (new moon) hence the wide aperture, long exposures and high ISO.

 
This is a more recent photo, taken during the peak of the the Perceid meteor showers. There are some faint meteors, but disappointingly only one bright one. It’s also noteworthy that this was taken at the same location as this photo.

Specs: Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm 2.8, f/8 at ISO 640. 50 frames stacked at 3.3 mins each = 2.75 hour exposure. I lit the foreground with a green gelled headlamp.

The shoot was a little disorganized: we showed up in the dark, the batteries were dead on our spotlight, I had never been to the spot before and Paul had only climbed there once. On top of that, it was ridiculously windy and the stands blew over a few times. But it was fun and we’ll hopefully do it again, perhaps earlier than 1am next time.

Details:

The image was captured using a Nikon D3 and a 17-35mm 2.8 lens. Two strobes with red gels were used  to freeze the climber (sort of) and an LED flashlight (also red gelled) was also used to paint in the rock and background. In post-processing, the speedlights were removed and the light painted frames were combined with the strobed frame. There’s a tiny bit of motion blur from his leg moving, but it was necessary to pull in the starry background. The final exposure was 8 seconds, at f/4 and ISO 1000 (to pull in the stars). The strobes were set to rear sync.

By the way, just after this shot, the rock broke and since someone had moved the crash pad out of the shot, Paul hit pretty hard, but still landed on his feet.

Here are a few from a weekend photo excursion with friends to rural towns of Tonopah and Goldfield, Nevada.

This is a “cave” near Pyramid Lake, NV during the recent meteor showers. 2.5 hours of exposing, freezing and conversing with some photo buddies. The red glow comes from a red-gelled headlamp facing into the rocks behind the camera.

And speaking of star trails, I’ll leave you with this new video I hacked together from my recent star trails’ still images.

Comments welcome…

I’ve never shot the Reno Air Races which is pretty much ridiculous for a Reno based photographer who loves aviation. So when a buddy said he could get me pit access at night, I jumped on the idea. By the time I got out of work and reached the airport, the sun had already gone down. In the evening, the aircraft are bathed in ugly glow of the bright sodium vapor lights, making it very difficult to get any decent photos. As a result, I improvised with my own lighting.

Just as I unpacked my gear, the Military Police showed up and told me I wasn’t supposed to be near the military aircraft, but they decided to give me a few minutes to grab a shot. I scrambled to set up my lights, stands, gels and tripod. Considering I literally had 5 minutes to set this one up, I think it turned out pretty well. There is just a hint of blue in the sky that really stands out when the photo is viewed on black (click on the photo to view on black).

Thanks to my buddy Cliff for the pit access (and keeping conversation with the MPs) while I ran around like a photographer on speed adjusting and position lights.

Lighting Specs: 5x bare Nikon Speedlights (4 with CTOs and one under with a heavy red gel).  Basically, the CTO speedlights are positioned in an X pattern shooting at 1/2 power at 24mm. All triggered by Skyports.

Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, F15 Eagle

It was there, on the dusty floor lined with torn Jehovah’s witness brochures and the occasional playing card, that we slept.

Above: Clocking in at 7 hours (stacked), this shot of an old single room school building is the longest star trails shot I’ve done thus far. Specs: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, 70 x 6min = 7 hours,  f/4, ISO 500.

A Coleman lantern illuminated the inside and a red gelled flash light painted the exterior. Thanks to Jon for the superb light painting.

Above: This was the scene at sunrise near the main house on the Ranch. Due to a slight oversight on my part (stupidity), I didn’t have any spare batteries and since my seven hour exposure had just finished my battery, I had to frantically “get creative” with ways to warm up my battery to squeeze out a few extra photos of the quickly approaching sunrise. Meanwhile, Jon happily took his time composing, focusing and exposing with his completely battery free 4×5 camera setup.

Specs: Nikon D300, Nikon 17-55mm 2.8, 1/100th, F11, ISO 400, battery life = 1% !

Above: At 5:00am my alarm went off to remind me to turn off my camera and prepare to shoot the sunrise. I bundled up, stepped outside into the brisk ranch air and as I turned my camera off, I looked up. This is what I saw. In the larger version of the photo, you’ll notice the galaxy Andromeda a few degrees above and to the left of the point on the roof of the house.

Specs: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, 30 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 800. I ran around like an idiot trying to paint the house with a flashlight during the 30 second exposure.

My humble abode: The tent was lit inside by a Coleman lantern and the foreground was illuminated by the camp-fire. Specs: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, Performance lens wipes

    
The Milky Way over the two small towns of Gerlach and Empire, Nv (where I grew up): For this shot, I painted the foreground from the side with a mag-light and proceeded to make a total of eight exposures vertically. The original panorama was 180 degrees, however I decided to crop it due to the light pollution produced by Black Rock City. I’m not sure which I like better, the color or the B&W version. Which is your favorite?

Trails over Mt. Rose: I thought I’d throw this in randomly. I took this back in May at Mt. Rose. I didn’t really think it was post worthy before, but I needed some filler for this post.

Meteors and Star Trails over the Blackrock Desert: Exposed for 3.5 hours with me sleeping inside. The sky is so bright because the moon rose during the end of the exposure. The glowing embers from our camp fire created a nice warm glow foreground and a short burst of the lantern lit up the tent.

Stay tuned for some timelapses of the stars and meteors!

Specs above: Nikon D300, 11-16mm 2.8, roughly an hour of exposures + 5min foreground exposure. The rocks were lit twice with an incandescent torch: once from the left and once from the right. 

 
Specs above: Nikon D2Xs, Nikon 17-55mm 2.8 @ f11 for 30 seconds, ISO 200

Fielding and I have been trying to shoot trains for the last few nights. Last night we waited and waited with the disappointment of no train. We occupied our time with this photo. That’s Fielding on the left and me on the right.

The photo made Explore #1 spot on flickr and was featured on the front page. I’m pretty stoked considering the photo was rated #1 (at least for a day) out of the more than TWO BILLION photos on flickr. Here’s the evidence

Photo Specs: Nikon D300, stacking method used with 35 exposure, 30 seconds @ ISO 1000 for fielding and I and 2 mins @ ISO 800 for the rest. Tokina 11-16mm 2.8, f/2.8 and f/4.

In other news…

Recently, one my audio trigger photos won 3rd place in the diyphotography.net D3A contest. The contest had close to ten thousand submissions during 10 month entry period. Thanks to Fielding, Nick and Jon for all the help and I have to admit that any of their photos could have easily won (if they had submitted them). BTW, the prize was a fancy programmable audio/visual timer (similar, but much more sophisticated than the one I used for the glass breaking shots). My next goal is to capture a bullet.

Finally, the scanner camera project has been featured on various tech and photography sites, the largest being CrunchGear.com and CNET Asia:

• CruchGear.com does an article on my scanner camera
• Crave on CNET Asia has a short write up on the project
• Tightwad Technica summarizes the project
• Focusoft Tech Blog’s post on the camera

I have been shooting nonstop for the last few days and I plan on posting more photography soon. Keep checking back.