Rick Goldwasser Photography
Ancient Light Show
B l a c k M a g i c is an absolute MUST to appreciate this one!!!
So I set the alarm for 1:00 A.M. so I could go out and shoot the Leonid Meteor Shower last night and, much to my surprise, I actually got out of bed and did it! Just so we're clear: I voluntarily woke up and went out into the 24 degree night, on a new moon (absolutely zero moonlight), drove out into the middle of the desert and walked around in 1000 year old ruins to see if I could, by pure luck, get a picture of a meteor over the ruins.
This is Wupatki Pueblo, it is about 20 miles outside of Flagstaff. To get this shot, I simply found a composition that I liked, set up the camera and then used the shotgun method - just take a whole bunch of pictures and hope that by dumb luck a meteor would wander into the frame during the 30 seconds the shutter was open. The frustrating part was there were many times that I would see meteors shooting across the sky outside my composition - frustrating but very cool. Since there was absolutely no moonlight, I had to use a flashlight to lightpaint the ruins. Considering the difficulty of this whole process, I am pretty happy with this result.
For anyone who's curious about settings on a shot like this:
ISO 1600, 30 sec. @ f/2.8, manual focus set to infinity.
Ancient Light Show
B l a c k M a g i c is an absolute MUST to appreciate this one!!!
So I set the alarm for 1:00 A.M. so I could go out and shoot the Leonid Meteor Shower last night and, much to my surprise, I actually got out of bed and did it! Just so we're clear: I voluntarily woke up and went out into the 24 degree night, on a new moon (absolutely zero moonlight), drove out into the middle of the desert and walked around in 1000 year old ruins to see if I could, by pure luck, get a picture of a meteor over the ruins.
This is Wupatki Pueblo, it is about 20 miles outside of Flagstaff. To get this shot, I simply found a composition that I liked, set up the camera and then used the shotgun method - just take a whole bunch of pictures and hope that by dumb luck a meteor would wander into the frame during the 30 seconds the shutter was open. The frustrating part was there were many times that I would see meteors shooting across the sky outside my composition - frustrating but very cool. Since there was absolutely no moonlight, I had to use a flashlight to lightpaint the ruins. Considering the difficulty of this whole process, I am pretty happy with this result.
For anyone who's curious about settings on a shot like this:
ISO 1600, 30 sec. @ f/2.8, manual focus set to infinity.