Matate Arch In Devils Garden, Escalante By Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook This

The Sailing Stones of Death Valley by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook The Sailing Stones or Walking Rocks of the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park, California, USA. The Playa is an extensive "dry" lake bed at a height of 1130 meters, 3608 feet, in Death Valley NP. It is 4.5 km long and 2.1km wide. The Moving Rocks have long been a mystery, leaving behind long tracks as they move without human or animal intervention. It's a fascinating and mysterious place at night. Cameras were set up to monitor them during the winter, and it is now thought that the stones move due to ice in the winter. A temporary pond can form and ice over. As the ice sheet breaks up the ice panels are blown by the wind and push the rocks along the semi frozen lake bed. This is a composite image with focus stacking, all taken at the same sitting and position. There is one exposure focused on the stars and distant mountains, one on the middle ground, and one on the stone, other camera factors unchanged. The rock was too close to get it all focused in one shot. Hope you enjoy, 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

Coral Sea Milky Way by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: This is a vertical panorama taken on the NE coast of Australia between the towns of Cairns and Port Douglas, in the region of the Great Barrier Reef. This part of the Pacific is called the Coral Sea. This is a stack of 8 horizontal image stacked vertically, each horizontal image taken with a Canon 16-35 mm lens at 16 mm, f 2.8, 30 sec, ISO 8000. So this image is pretty wide as well as "tall". From the perspective of an observer from the Northern Hemisphere, the Milky Way is fascinating in the Southern Hemisphere, and presents its own unique challenges. Here I am talking about the arch MW as a whole, and not just the core. First, the Milky Way arches high overhead at this time of year (April). The arch starts out lower on the horizon, but as the night progress it rapidly assumes a position high overhead. As a result the MW in the early night is a lot like the MW arch in the NH (Northern Hemisphere) in early spring, and then later in the night it is a lot like the NH MW in late summer and fall (more vertical) where it meets the horizon. Another difference is that the core of the MW is in the middle of the MW arch, and not near the horizon as we commonly see in the NH. As a result you need a really wide field of view or stacked panorama images to get good photos of the core and landscape at the same time. As a result you see a lot of panoramas of the MW taken from the SH (Southern Hemisphere). As for this image, it was taken after Moonset at around 2:30 pm. By this time the MW core was high in the sky, and I used a vertical stack to include the core. Since we did not plan the trip around night photography, I had to take the chances available, and this night I had a couple of good hours of shooting, after Moonset, but before the MW core got to high. A couple of nights later the MW was just about directly overhead before the Moon set, high enough to cause problems. When it is that high it is hard to include much landscape. This was probably as clear as mud. Hope you enjoy! Thanks in advance for taking the time to look and comment. 

A Vast Eroded Land by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah, USA. This panorama was done a little differently than usual. The landscape images were taken under a setting moon (waxing, 50%) approx. 1 hour before moonset. All images were taken at 24 mm. The foreground was taken at f/2.8, 10 sec., ISO 6400. The sky ws taken 2 hours later, on a hour after moonset at f/2., 20 sec., and ISO 12,800. There were 10 vertical images taken at 24 mm for the sky and foreground. Images combined in LR and processed in PS. For more images like this please take a look at my website here . Thanks for all the kind support! Hope you enjoy! A big thank you to the wonderful Flickr family. Cheers, Wayne

Reflections by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook Reflections: The Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds are reflected in the shallow waters of the Great Barrier Island in New Zealand. The Magellanic Clouds are irregular dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. They do have a “bar” of stars or brightness centrally but are not classic spiral galaxies. Observation and theoretical evidence suggests that the clouds have been greatly distorted by tidal interactions with the Milky Way as they travel close to it (Astronomy.com). ___________________________________________ As an observer from the Northern Hemisphere it was fun to see the features of the Southern Hemisphere sky, like the Magellanic Clouds. These lie near the “southern arm” of the Milky Way and are not visible in the Northern Hemisphere. ___________________________________________ Usually we just have to coordinate the position on the Milky Way, the moon cycles, landscape location, and weather to get the desired shot. Here there was one more factors, the tides, which I was not used to considering. At low tide there is a very thin layer of water along the shore which was perfect for capturing reflections. Luckily this occurred around 1 - 2 a.m. when the stars were in excellent position. Stacked image, 14-24 mm lens, 14 mm, f/2.8, 20 sec., ISO 12,800. ___________________________________________ If you want an excellent guide to good shooting spots on the Great Barrier Island contact Carol @darkskysanctuary on IG.

Shiprock Reprised by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: This is a panorama of Shiprock, the huge rock tower for which the town of Shiprock, New Mexico is named. Many photos back I posted a photo of Shipwreck from last year, and several people had expressed an interest in shooting there. We (myself, Chris Wray, Sandra Herber, and Eric Gail) shot there and ran into another group from Flickr including Willa Wei, Huibo Hou, and Wenjie Qiao. Some of their photos have been posted from the night, and it is fascinating to see how different photographers interpret what they capture. The photos vary quite a bit and reflect choices in processing and acquisition. Willa's group captured foreground photos at blue hour and as such they have more foreground detail which is beautiful. We arrived later and for the panoramas obtained a series of vertical single exposures, foreground included. This is series of 12 vertical images obtained with a 24 f1.4 Bower-Rokinon lens at 24 mm, f 1.4, 15 sec., andISO 12,800. The rock monolith is 1,583 feet, 482.5 meters high (from the surrounding plain). It is the remnant of the throat or central core of an extinct volcano, exposed over time by erosion. By the way, one of the photographers, Wenjie Qiao, has developed an excellent smartphone app called PlanIt, that helps to plan night photographs like this. Consider checking it out! 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

Questions and Answers

Do You Go Out Alone for the Night Photos?

Question: Thanks for sharing this fantastic photo. Question: Were you in the park alone? Do you travel with a group? I'm curious.I'm thinking about taking a trip out to Vegas to shoot the parks in the area and am thinking about doing some night shoots alone. Any thought?

Answer: Usually I go out at night alone, although that might not be the best choice for everyone. I have gone out a few times with workshops, and occasionally I find someone at the site and we shoot together. Being out there at night is something you have to get used to. A lot of people are unnerved by the isolation and darkness. This says a lot about our society. It is estimated that 80% of people in the USA have never seen the Milky Way. Many people ask me "what is that cloud in the sky"? Once there was a complete blackout in Los Angeles and people called the police to report a suspicious cloud hovering over the city. It was the Milky Way. We are not used to being out in the dark except for moving from place to place. And we are not used to being so utterly alone. I love the feel of being out there at night, but it is not for everyone. You need to be really careful. I wear really high boots and keep an eye out for potential rattlesnakes. I really pay attention to where I step, always. You have to make sure your footing is always secure, because you may be standing on rough ground or ledges and you are going to spend a lot of time with the lights totally turned off. Before I turn the lights off I look around and see just where it is safe to step. I always keep an eye out for any people or large game. Take bear spray for example. Anyway it has been safe for me so far, but you do need to be careful. Some people even take a dog with them! It's a great experience, but remember to think about how to be safe.

Cheers, Wayne

The Potholes of Escalante by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook Escalante Utah Pothole. These are giant eroded holes in the rocks and many have their own isolated landscape or ecosystem. Very fascinating! This was captured during a workshop with Royce Bair. I highly recommend his workshops. This is a reprocess. I think this is the hardest image I have ever processed. I just did not have the skill to do it adequately at the initial time, and I am not so sure that I have it now, lol. The difficulty comes from the wildly colorful sky (with bands of color and brightness, all the airglow, and all the clouds. I did several short panoramas over the pothole, and I did another 10-12 photos all from the same spot and with the same exposure factors. I was waiting for the clouds to clear, which they never did. I went back and pieced together the parts of the MW without clouds from the various frames. I “borrowed” parts of the MW and sky from the other photos I took at the same spot. The wild air glow makes it hard to know just what the sky is supposed to look like. Thanks for taking the time to look. Hope you enjoy! A big thank you to the wonderful Flickr family for all the support and encouragement! Cheers, Wayne

Eggshells and Cracked Eggs by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook Blend (Focus Stack) Nikon 810A, f 2.8, 20 sec., 17 mm, Nikon 14-24 mm lens Cracked Eggs and Eggshells. This is taken in the Bisti Badlands in an area know as the "Cracked Eggs" or the "Alien Egg Factory". This was done in a workshop during the May New Moon. It is about a 1.5 mile hike from the parking lot. The badlands are a mesmerizing place at night with a very otherworldly feel. In this photo I was trying to capture a close view of a "cracked" egg along with the Milky Way. There is a close focus on the "eggshell" and a far focus on the sky. I am giving a Landscape Astrophotography Workshop in the New Mexico Badlands in July, two 3 day workshops, July 8-10 and July 11-13. If interested please contact me through my website. We will cover Landscape Astrophotography with classic night landscapes and then add people/figures into the compositions. Thanks for all the kind support over the last year, it is much appreciated! A big thank you to the wonderful Flickr family!

A Big Thank You! by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: THIS ONE'S FOR YOU! This is a photo I have posted before, a nighttime panorama of Joshua Tree National Park. It was recently selected as one of the Top 25 Photos on Flickr for 2015, as seen on the Flickr Blog: blog.flickr.net/en/2015/12/01/flickrs-top-25-photos-in-2015/ If you read the method of choosing photos, it has to do with the number of interactions generated, including the number of views, the number favs, the number of comments, etc. This means I post the photo, and get the recognition, but it ONLY comes from all the work and interaction that you guys did. You guys did the heavy lifting, all the hard work. You guys are the ones that earned this award, not I, and I realize that. Thanks for all the view, favs, and comments. It's been a great year. 

 Cheers, Wayne Pinkston

What are you using as light sources? These are amazing photos.

Hi and thanks for looking. Yes, I am using light sources for many of these photos. The lights are turned down really low to match the intensity of the stars, and them the scenes are captured as a single exposure. The lights are so low that they are hard to see in person, but show up well on a 30 second exposure. I have an earlier post on Tumblr that talks about the brands of lights I use. Most are dimmable Video LED light panels with warming filters of Halogen hand held spotlights that I reflect off of nearby objects (reflected light). I describe the types of lights I use here:   

http://lightcrafter.smugmug.com/About-Nightscapes

Scroll down until you see “About Equipment”

Cheers, Wayne