Night Photography
by Michael Frye | Nov 17, 2015 | Night Photography
Lunar eclipse sequence with light-painted Joshua trees, September 27th, 2015, Joshua Tree NP, CA, USA
Here, finally, is my photograph of the lunar eclipse on September 27th. We went to Colorado right after this, and then to the eastern Sierra, and in the middle of all that I had to deal with a computer problem, so it’s taken me awhile to put together this sequence.
You might recall that I had planned to go to Death Valley or the Alabama Hills for the eclipse, but a stream of high clouds threatened to block the view, so at the last minute we decided to head further south, away from the clouds, to Joshua Tree National Park.
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by Michael Frye | Sep 22, 2015 | Night Photography, Photography Tips
Lunar eclipse sequence, April 14th and 15th, 2014, Trona Pinnacles, CA, USA
We’re going to get another chance to photograph a lunar eclipse this Sunday evening in North America and South America (or early Monday morning in Europe and Africa).
This eclipse also coincides with the moon’s perigee, meaning that the moon will be at its closest point to the earth during its orbit, and will look bigger than usual. The media is going to make a big deal about this “supermoon,” but the moon will only look seven percent larger than average, a difference that won’t be readily apparent to the naked eye, much less in photographs.
However, every total lunar eclipse is special – a spectacular event to view and photograph. And unlike the last one in April, this one will feature a long total eclipse phase.
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by Michael Frye | Sep 16, 2015 | Night Photography
Wagon wheel behind the Dechambeau Hotel, Bodie. I loved this wagon wheel poking out of the ground, and worked with one of our participants, Jeff, to light this scene. We started with an exposure for the sky, then lit the wagon wheel, getting close with a flashlight outfitted with a homemade snoot to try to light only the rim and spokes. Then Jeff lit the shed on the right from two different angles, and I lit the two-story buildings from both sides.
As promised, here are a few photos from the nighttime sessions during our recent Bodie, Inside and Out workshop.
The lighting for each of these photographs was rather complex, and required blending several exposures together. In each case I started with a frame for the sky (my standard pinpoint-star exposure: 15 seconds at f/2.8, 6400 ISO), then used separate frames (at lower ISOs and smaller apertures) to light different aspects of the scene. As I’ve described before, the individual exposures were blended together in Photoshop using the Lighten blending mode, and sometimes adding layer masks to hide stray light.
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by Michael Frye | Sep 11, 2015 | Night Photography
Tufa and Milky Way, Mono Lake, CA, USA
The last few weeks have been very busy. We just finished our Bodie workshop, which was tremendous fun. I’ll post some images from the workshop when I get a chance to process them, but in the meantime here’s a photograph from last Saturday, just before the workshop started.
I wanted to photograph at South Tufa at Mono Lake, but was worried that it would be too crowded, since it was Saturday on Labor Day weekend. And when Claudia and I pulled into the South Tufa parking lot at sunset we were astonished at the number of cars: the entire, large parking lot looked full.
We managed to find a place to park, and headed out to the lake, figuring that since it was getting dark most of the people would leave soon. And indeed, the place emptied out quickly, except for a few photographers intent on night photography. By ten o’clock, when I made this image, there were only three other people around – all photographers of course.
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by Michael Frye | Aug 28, 2015 | Night Photography
Tufa and stars (with Perseus and the Pleiades), Mono Lake. I lit the tufa formations with a flashlight during the 15-second exposure; it only took a brief pass with the light to provide sufficient illumination at 6400 ISO and f/2.8.
As I said in my last post, we had remarkably clear skies during our recent Starry Skies Adventure workshop, despite the proximity of the Walker Fire. But 24 hours before the workshop started the situation was uncertain and changing quickly. We didn’t know what would happen with the fire, and whether we’d see any stars through the smoke. Some workshop participants decided to take a rain check (smoke check?), which was completely understandable under the circumstances. But most people chose to come anyway and take their chances. In the end we had a great time. There were moments, while standing under the stars in the clear, cool, night air, when the fire seemed like a vague, distant memory.
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by Michael Frye | Aug 23, 2015 | Night Photography, Workshops
Helicopter over the Walker Fire from Highway 395, last Sunday evening
Our Starry Skies Adventure workshop turned out to be a little more adventurous than we thought. Just before we left our home in Mariposa last Saturday to head for the workshop I checked the satellite photos online. The Rough Fire near King’s Canyon National Park had been sending smoke north, so I was keeping an eye on it. But my last-minute check revealed a new smoke plume just to the southwest of Mono Lake. Uh oh. Our workshop was based in Lee Vining, on the west shore of Mono Lake, only a few miles from that smoke plume.
I could see the smoke from this new fire on one of the Yosemite webcams. I found that it was called the Walker Fire, and that it had started the night before near Walker Lake, but I couldn’t find any up-to-date information about the fire’s size and location. When Claudia and I left home about 3:00 p.m. the Tioga Road (Highway 120) through the park was still open. But when we got to Tuolumne Meadows we found that the fire had closed the road between the eastern entrance of the park and Highway 395. What do we do now? We decided we had to drive around over Sonora Pass and check out the fire in person. That meant five extra hours of driving, and a long night ahead of us.
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