Star trails over my home in the mountains
Assignment 52 - My own favorite shots from 2013
My sense of wonder & amazement at the star trails fits well with how I feel about this place, the house we built in the mountains as a "second home." I had to work so hard to get this shot, & it taught me so much -- about shutter speed & long exposures, & manual settings, & remote shutter releases, & how to get over tripod-phobia & develop a facility for using one in the dark on a steep, uneven surface--- etc. Lots of experimenting & re-takes & perseverance required, & climbing up & down the slope in the dark, hoping to
avoid both cactus & bears, & with 30 min. exposures, the number of chances in any given night is limited. Plus it's a narrow window -- a few days near the new moon, for the best opportunities, & in the end, I also needed some luck for a night with no cloud cover. It was Ann (ND Wind Twins) who gave me the idea to take this on, though she ran out of time & cloudless nights to do it herself. Maybe she will yet -- I'd like to do some more myself---
Here's a link to some of my more successful experiments, before I got this one:
Star trails over my home in the mountains
Assignment 52 - My own favorite shots from 2013
My sense of wonder & amazement at the star trails fits well with how I feel about this place, the house we built in the mountains as a "second home." I had to work so hard to get this shot, & it taught me so much -- about shutter speed & long exposures, & manual settings, & remote shutter releases, & how to get over tripod-phobia & develop a facility for using one in the dark on a steep, uneven surface--- etc. Lots of experimenting & re-takes & perseverance required, & climbing up & down the slope in the dark, hoping to
avoid both cactus & bears, & with 30 min. exposures, the number of chances in any given night is limited. Plus it's a narrow window -- a few days near the new moon, for the best opportunities, & in the end, I also needed some luck for a night with no cloud cover. It was Ann (ND Wind Twins) who gave me the idea to take this on, though she ran out of time & cloudless nights to do it herself. Maybe she will yet -- I'd like to do some more myself---
Here's a link to some of my more successful experiments, before I got this one: