Dunes By Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook Located Near Monument Valley. We Were

Red Topped Hoodoos in the Valley of Dreams by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Red Topped Hoodoos in the Valley of Dreams, New Mexico Badlands. There is low level constant light on the foreground. This is not classic light painting, but more similar to modified studio lighting or "outdoor" studio lighting. It consists of light panels on tripods left on the whole time, very dim, barely visible or not visible to the naked eye. This takes time to set up. The light is intended to match the intensity of starlight (it does not take much!). This different from traditional light painting where you briefly shine a brighter light on the subject or near a subject. I have encountered several photographers at night that just about had a nervous breakdown when you mentioned light painting, but then became very quiet and cooperative when they saw the lighting I set up. I think we need a different label for this kind of landscape lighting, different from "light painting". I have decided to personally call this Low Level Landscape Lighting, (LLLL for short), or LLL, Low Level Lighting. I hope some term other than light painting catches on, as it just does not describe the more recent methods of landscape lighting at night. I doubt that anyone in a studio would describe their lighting as "light painting;. We just need some new language to talk about these methods more accurately. Thanks for taking the time to look. Hope you enjoy! Big thanks to the wonderful Flickr family out there. Please join me at: Website Facebook Instagram Blog

Park Avenue by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook Park Avenue, Wall to Wall: Another location I’ve been wanting to capture is “Park Ave.” in Arches National Park. I’ve wanted to see if I could make an interesting composition in this location. Park Ave. is a trail between large buttes and spires on each side. To include the Milky Way I had to get to the north end of the trail and look south. This is a panorama of approximately 240 degrees, trying to capture the towering walls on each side. I still didn’t capture the feeling of the immense walls on each side, but you can get an idea of the landscape. This is a panorama. The sky was captured at 14 mm, f/2.8, 29 sec., and ISO 4,000. The foreground was captured at 14 mm, f/2.0, 120 sec., and ISO 6400. Images combined in PS. Thanks for looking! Wayne

Questions and Answers

Do you hire guides?

Question: Do you hire Guides to find locations?

 Answer:  Do I use guides? Mostly no. Rarely I hire a guide. Sometimes I go with other photographers that know the area. Typically I go to scout an area before I shoot it. I research it on the internet and I have many hiking books for the West and Southwest USA. I thoroughly research the area online and in hiking books. 

Many times I see a photograph online that looks like a good night location, and I start researching that location. I prefer to go to places that do not have many people or one that has not received much attention at night. I like to find new places rather than just photograph the classic old ones. 

I go there and scout the area out in daylight. I record the GPS track or hike on my smart phone with the Gaia GPS app. It is a very good app. 

I check the place out to see if it is suitable for night landscapes. I mark the sites I want to photograph. I then follow the GPS track back there at night. Everything looks different at night. Everything, lol. 

I do a lot of hiking at night so it is easy to get lost. Use the GPS! Recording the GPS data is also great for using the next year or later, and also for communicating with other people. For example, there is a good place to photograph that I found in the Bisti Badlands of New Mexico that I found before I used the GPS app, and I never found it again, despite looking several times. 

For a big overview of a place that is new to me I might hire a guide to take me around and give me the big picture before I start exploring on my own. 

Learn how to use a GPS app on a smartphone! You can get the GPS signal even when you are out of cell phone range. Many of the places I go do not have a cell signal, but GPS still works.

Cheers, Wayne

Dec, 2016

Delicate Light by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: This is the iconic Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, in Utah, USA. I had wanted to try my hand at this for a while, but the site had become so popular that I had major reservations about competing with others over "territory" for filming. Fellow photographer Eric Gail and I made the hike and found 20-25 people there including 2 people who said they were from the BBC making a time lapse. Two of the parities did indeed get into a hostile shouting match and the location "heated up". After everyone calmed down we were able to take turns and everything worked out just fine. Thanks to everyone there for such good co-operation. We did set up this lighting scheme which most found acceptable. A few people preferred the blue light of LEDs, and they had their turn. The time lapse people just filmed it all. There is smoke near the horizon from the fires in California. This obscures the stars near the horizon. You can see a layer of smoke above the light pollution. Thanks for taking the time to look. Hope you enjoy! Your time, faves, and comments are much appreciated! Please join me at: Website Facebook Instagram Blog

Utah’s Canyon Country by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook Utah’s Canyon Country Panorama. Sometimes there are good surprises, especially at night. I shot another location first, so it was dark by the time I got to this location. The clouds were rolling in and I couldn’t see anything. Since this is a panorama I could only see fractions of the scene at one time on the camera LCD. I didn’t have much hope for a decent result, and I didn’t see the final results until months later when I finally had a chance to sit down and combine the images. I was pleasantly surprised and this turned out to be one of my favorites from the summer. Even the clouds worked out ok. The sky and foreground were shot separately. Rokinon 35 mm f/1.4 lens. The sky panorama was shot at 35 mm, f/1.8, 10 sec., and ISO 5000. The foreground panorama was shot with long exposures, 240 seconds, f/1.8, 35 mm, ISO 2500. _________________________________________Happy New Year and great shooting to everyone in the coming year! ________________________________________

A Quiet Night in Joshua Tree by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, USA, with the Milky Way above. This was taken in an attempt to capture the unique landscape and feel of Joshua Tree National Park at night. In some ways Joshua Tree reminds me of the Alabama Hills, but with lots of odd looking trees. :-) The park contains portions of the Mojave Desert and the Colorado Desert, and is slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island, approximately 100 X 50 Km. The Joshua Tree is the Yucca Brevifolia, and they are usually grow in a widely spaced and scattered pattern. Much of the park is considered "High Desert", ranging up to 5,500 feet (1850 Meters). There are 2 small static light lights among the rocks, and a brighter light 30-40 meters to my right at about 45 degrees. One problem in Joshua Tree is the shadows, as there are lots of boulders, shrubs, and trees scattered around. This is taken shortly after the Milky Way has risen above the horizon, and at that time has a more horizontal orientation, later to become more of an arch. Canon 1D x Camera, Nikon 14-24 mm lens at 14 mm, f 2.8, 20 sec, ISO 6400, 3700 K. Hope you enjoy! 

Trona Pinnacles by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: This is a panorama of the Trona Pinnacles in California, USA, another small step in my efforts to photograph landscapes at night (this time a larger area). For orientation the parking lot is on the left and the dirt road in the foreground goes around the right side of the formation and carries you deeper into the park. There is "static" light painting. There is a light far to the right, and several small lights among the pinnacles. There was a lot of light pollution aiding in the lighting. The bright area along the horizon to the left is Ridgecrest, Ca., and I believe the light pollution on the bottom right is Barstow, Ca. The image wraps around more than 180 degrees, approx. 210 degrees. There is some airglow near the horizon creating the greenish effect in the sky. Many night photographers remove or diminish the light pollution and airglow to make the scene look more natural or to make the sky look more like people expect it to look. I have decided to go along with what the camera detects rather than what you expect to see. As a result this produces a somewhat surreal effect, which to me has a more exotic feel. This is a series of 15 vertical images combined in Lightroom (the new version has a panorama merge function). The images were taken with a Canon 1D X camera and Nikon 14-24 mm lens at f 2.8, 14 mm, 30 sec exposures, and ISO 6400. Hope you enjoy! Thanks in advance for taking the time to look and comment. 

The Forgotten Arm, Part 1: by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook Painted Hand Ancestral Puebloan Ruins “The Forgotten Arm” is actually a boxing term describing “a move in which one arm is used to hit the opponent, causing him to "forget" about the other arm, which is then used to deliver a harsher blow” (Wikipedia). I am going to borrow this phrase to describe the Northern Arm of the Milky Way, or arm of the Milky Way we see extending North in the Northern Hemisphere. Our sun actually lies in the Orion Arm or Orion Spur, a minor arm of the Milky Way between the Sagittarius Arm and the Perseus Arm. Since we are looking from within the Milky Way, we see it as a disk-like structure edge on, rather than a spiral. A large part of what we see when we look away from the Galactic Core is the Perseus Arm. I call this northern portion the “Forgotten Arm” because we go to so much trouble to shoot away from it, and work to include the Galactic Core in our photos instead. We even have “Milky Way Season”, implying the season is over after the core moves below the horizon in our Northern Hemisphere winter. The “Northern Arm” is still up there, and has lots of interesting structures to see, and is photogenic in itself. Among structures in this region are the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), other Galaxies including Mirach’s Ghost Galaxy (NGC404), the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), and others, as well as star clusters including the Double Cluster (DC), Spiral Cluster (M34), Open Cluster (C28), Dragonfly Cluster (DF) and others, as well as Nebula including the Heart Nebula (IC1805), and Soul Nebula (IC1848). I will try and label some of these structures. There will be 2 photos, one with landscape, and one magnified and labeled. More to come, Cheers Wayne

Grandstand at the La Playa Racetrack by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook This is "The Grandstand" in the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley. The Playa is a dry lake bed in Death Valley National Park. It lies in a relatively remote area, about a 4 hour drive from Furnace Creek, mostly down a rutted and sometimes rocky dirt road. This is not a road to hurry alone. There are many tales of flat or ruptured tires, and this is not a place to get stuck. The dry lake bed is sonic and unusual. It is best known for the "Sailing Stones" or "Walking Rocks". The Grandstand lies in the NW area of the Playa, and the Sailing Stones are better see more to the South. The Grandstand is a large rock formation arising from the dry lake bed. The photographer in the right foreground of the photo is Eric Gail. He masterminded the trip to the playa. Thank you Eric! You can see his excellent gallery here: www.flickr.com/photos/dot21studios Hey Eric, I'm going to need another model release! Maybe you can send me the name of your agent! Thanks for taking the time to look. Hope you enjoy! Big thanks to the wonderful Flickr family for all the support and encouragement! Cheers, Wayne

Set the Table for One... by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: A quiet night in the Bisti Badlands of New Mexico. There are many of these "Table Top" Hoodoos scattered around the area. These develop when the base , a softer rock, erodes faster than the top, making for a wide variety of shapes. These table tops are one of my favorites. When the flat tops are really long or wide, they have been given the name of "winged hoodoos", and some are quite long and wing-like. Here I was playing around with the lights. Canon 6D camera, Nikon 14-24 mm lens at 14 mm, f 2.8, 30 sec., and ISO 6400. Thanks for taking the time to look. Hope you enjoy! Please join me at: Website Facebook Instagram Blog