My Interpretation Of The Year 2020 🤔 Maybe I Should Save This One For Halloween? Lol Stacked Image,

Hi Wayne, I just wanna pop by and say 'thank you'. It's very kind of you to share your tips and experience with us in taking good landscape astro photos. I wish you all the very best in your journey. Asteria.

Thanks for taking the time to look and write. It’s much appreciated. Cheers, Wayne

Canyon de Chelly Panorama by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Faceb ook Panorama of Canyon de Chelly in Chinle, Arizona, taken from one of the viewpoints on the Southern Rim. I had never seen a night photo from the rim of the canyon so I wanted to give it a try. There was so much light pollution that I did not expect this to be successful, and left disappointed after trying panoramas from several viewpoints. When I processed it, the image was more successful than expected, and the light pollution actually adds more color to the photo. For more images like this please take a look at Wayne Pinkston Photography . Thanks for all the kind support! Hope you enjoy! A big thank you to the wonderful Flickr family. It's a pleasure to post here.

Questions and Answers:

How to stitch photos together for panoramas

Question: Incredible work man! How did you stitch the 14mm shots so seamlessly?! The distortion on my Rokinon 14 makes stitching a huge issue in post.

Answer: Use a lot of overlap when taking the photos! I open the images in either Lightroom or Adobe RAW and use the lens correction function to undistort then as much as possible. If there is not a lens profile for your lens then do it manually and do it exactly the same for each photo. Also, there is less distortions if the camera lens is more horizontal. I get it as horizontal as I can and still get all the sky comfortably in the photo. I use a really wide angle lens. This means there may be a lot of "extra" foreground at the bottom, and I just crop it off. Hope this helps. Cheers, Wayne

Kiss the Sky by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook Sunset Arch in the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument in Utah, USA. This was taken during a workshop with Royce Bair (highly recommended!). Hope you enjoy! A big thank you to the wonderful Flickr family for all the support and encouragement! Cheers, Wayne

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

The Alien Throne with Comet 252P/Linear by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: No Aliens, just the Alien Throne. The unique Hoodoo is in the New Mexico Badlands, north of Chaco Canyon. I have been fascinated by the appearance since I first saw it's photo, and finally got to photograph it at night. The atmosphere is surreal. I love the melted wax appearance of the rocks in the region. 14-24 mm lens at 24 mm, 20 sec., f/2.8, ISO 6400. The small blue-green fuzzy object just above the right side of the large hoodoo is the comet 252P/LINEAR. 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

Morning Twilight at the Trona Pinnacles by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: This one is a bit different. I overstayed my welcome, trying to get as many photos around the Pinnacles as possible before the sun rose, but despite my best efforts, the sun rose anyway. I was still shooting when the morning twilight started. As I took this photo the sun's glow was starting to be seen on the horizon, and with light pollution created a yellow glow. There were clouds near the horizon which were illuminated also. The sky was becoming noticeably lighter, but you could still see the Milky Way surprisingly well. There are 2 static lights helping to light the spires, one downhill to my right, and one downhill from my feet. There is also a fair amount of ambient light present from the twilight hour. It was a kind of "golden hour" before sunrise. Canon 1Dx Camera, Nikon 14-24 mm lens at 20 mm, f 2.8, 30 sec, and ISO 6400. Hope you enjoy!

Starlight Tufas by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook Starlight Tufas at Mono Lake. Single Exposure. Nikon D810A Camera, 14-24 mm lens, 17 mm, 20 sec., ISO 12,800. 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

Questions and Answers

Airglow

 People have asked me a number of questions about equipment, issues, and technique in Nightscape or Landscape Astrophotography. Since many of these questions are recurring, I am going to post the questions and answers here. I’ll answer your questions to the best of my ability!

Q: Why is the sky green?

A: You asked where the green was coming from in the Milky Way photo. The green color is from "airglow" that the camera can image, but you cannot see with the naked eye. In photographs it looks very much like very faint Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis, but occurs anywhere on earth, is best seen when it is very dark, and best seen toward the horizon. It looks odd and so a lot of photographers just try to get rid of it. I like the "otherworldly" look so I enhance it instead. Here is what Wikipedia says: Airglow is caused by various processes in the upper atmosphere, such as the recombination of atoms, which were photo ionized by the sun during the day, luminescence caused by cosmic rays striking the upper atmosphere and chemiluminescence caused mainly by oxygen and nitrogen reacting with hydroxyl ions at heights of a few hundred kilometers. It is not noticeable during the daytime because of the scattered light from the sun.

The Hanging Hoodoo by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook “The Hanging Hoodoo”. I’ve been away from Flickr for many months unfortunately. It’s been a busy summer and I have a whole season of photos to process and post, and I’m just finally getting around to it. If anyone is still actually following me, then many thanks. 🙏🙏🙏 I had the opportunity to explore an area in New Mexico that I had not been to before, an area outside of the usual photo locations, and I found this “Hanging Hoodoo”. I was immediately enamored by the photo potential. I was able to return at the next new moon and get this photo. Next year I’ll return and get the scene with the Milky Way to the left of the hoodoo, but it was too late in the year to get it this time. I could just make a composite and paste a MW to the left of the hoodoo, but I try to keep it real. It’s a lot more fun and challenging to make it work out in actuality than just adding a MW. A lot more trouble too, lol. I think this would be a major photo op for photographers if anyone knew about it. I was lucky to find it. There is a 20 image stack for the sky and a 5 minute exposure for the foreground, blended in PS, all taken from the same position, back to back. Thought for the day... “The night is a tunnel, a hole into tomorrow..." ... Frank Herbert Thanks for looking! Wayne Pinkston