p.3 #5 · Milky Way over the Race Track, Death Valley
Slabshaft wrote:
I'd rather see someone stick a rock somewhere than to remove them. Last year we found plenty of tracks with WAY too many missing rocks.
.
It is wrong to presume that all racetrack trails that end with no rocks are necessarily due to someone taking the rock away. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but do not assume that a no rock trail is always due to vandalism. The most plausible theory of the rocks being partially lifted via ice collars explains how rocks large and small can move in unison, they are tied together by ice. It also explains how rocks many hundreds of pounds can move at all. Finally the rising water in a subsequent episode can lift the ice collar (or ice sheet) enough for the encased rock to move without touching the playa surface at all, hence a trail with no rock.
The NASA study referenced in this thread https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1005570/0?keyword=how
p.3 #6 · Milky Way over the Race Track, Death Valley
Well, congrats, you did it. With passion, that is!
Interestingly, I just start getting gears for astrophotography. Can't wait to get a shot like this.
Do you care to share how and with what gears did you get this picture?
p.3 #8 · Milky Way over the Race Track, Death Valley
Mike K wrote:
It is wrong to presume that all racetrack trails that end with no rocks are necessarily due to someone taking the rock away. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but do not assume that a no rock trail is always due to vandalism. The most plausible theory of the rocks being partially lifted via ice collars explains how rocks large and small can move in unison, they are tied together by ice. It also explains how rocks many hundreds of pounds can move at all. Finally the rising water in a subsequent episode can lift the ice collar (or ice sheet) enough for the encased rock to move without touching the playa surface at all, hence a trail with no rock.
The NASA study referenced in this thread https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1005570/0?keyword=how
The fact that many of us who have gone out there for many years have seen with our own eyes that many rocks have been moved or removed is evidence of what has happened and what continues to happen. I do understand the theory of ice and wind caused rock movement very well, and in order to imagine that this caused the recent removal of rocks that we saw there in the past, you would have to push the limits of plausibility far beyond the breaking point.
I've been mostly silent about this, but this intriguing photographic construction provides sad evidence of the things done to the Racetrack by visitors, including its photographic evidence of two rocks that have now been stacked atop one another.
This place, and these rocks, presented us with an astonishing and thought provoking geological miracle and even a mystery or two. The evidence that they no longer are where natural forces moved them, or that some of them have simply been removed to, I presume, decorate someone's mantle or backyard, tells a very different and not very miraculous story.
p.3 #9 · Milky Way over the Race Track, Death Valley
Wow guys, honored to win the thread of the week! It was a great experience to shoot out there at night and I'm glad the image went over well. Thanks again!
nugeny wrote:
Well, congrats, you did it. With passion, that is!
Interestingly, I just start getting gears for astrophotography. Can't wait to get a shot like this.
Do you care to share how and with what gears did you get this picture?
Sure, I'll include some of the tech info as well.
Body- Sony A7r
Lens: Zeiss Distagon T* 2,8/21 ZE
Sky: Tracked 4 Minutes, ISO 800, F/2.8
Ground: 30 seconds, ISO 800, F/4. Focus Stacked. Lit with LED's
LR5 -> CS6
p.3 #13 · Milky Way over the Race Track, Death Valley
At this point I almost feel like i'm just piling on (the complements), but it's such a beautiful image, I can't help doing so.
Excellent work; beautiful eye candy for us all, but only you own that night at that place. I'm sure it's indelible in your head now and for a long time.
p.3 #15 · Milky Way over the Race Track, Death Valley
Excellent shot, as most have said. I wondered if you could lend some advice:
New to astrophotography, and I want to get something like what you've posted. I have the luxury of some great glass, but I keep getting tempted by Rokinon.
I have the Zeiss 15mm and 21mm f2.8, as well as the Zeiss 35mm f1.4. The 35mm will be used for stitching, and won't make it in my pack this trip. The Zeiss 15mm will definitely go in my pack (I'm backpacking to get these shots), though I really don't love the idea of bringing expensive glass backpacking.
Here's the question, I keep getting tempted by this Rokinon 24 f1.4 that everyone raves about. If I'm not tracking, should I buy one of these and put that in my bag with the Zeiss 15mm instead of with the the Zeiss 21mm? Is it possible that the Rokinon 24mm will actually perform better than the zeiss 21?
p.3 #18 · Milky Way over the Race Track, Death Valley
gdanmitchell wrote:
I hate to be the one to point it out, but I have a pretty strong suspicion that one of those rocks was placed there by a person and not moved there naturally.
It has been a while since I've been to the playa, though I used to go there frequently before it became so popular. On my last couple of visits I encountered missing rocks and rocks that had been moved. I pretty sure that this is the explanation for your double rock at the end of a single track. (There are pairs of rocks that are close to one another out there, but all of them that I've seen had separate tracks.)
I just waded through a ton of online photographs trying to find another with those two rocks, and came up empty handed—though it shouldn't be too hard to find given the long straight track with the slight bend in the distance.
While I'm not able to say definitively what happened here—no, while I know quite a few of the rocks individually, I don't know them all—I have to wonder just a bit if this is another unfortunate example of people messing with the features of the playa.
Take care,
It's a different life Dan,
Manipulation is king and and nobody cares about purism.
People mess with imaging all the time Dan. Your time is finished and so is mine. It's all about manipulation now and not how the original image was captured in the pure sense. Images that you and I produce won't get a second look anymore.
I don't and don't want the skills to blend 200 images into something workable. Have you ever wondered where all those fabulous skies came from?
p.3 #20 · Milky Way over the Race Track, Death Valley
Nigel Turner wrote:
Nobody cares anymore Dan.
It's manipulation over purism.
It is bizarre. We go to great lengths to photograph what we love about the natural world, and we either claim or allow viewers to believe that the photographs we make are some sort of honest representation of what we saw or even of what might be real, at its best.
Yet we also don't seem to be bothered when a photograph — and an impressive looking image it is — instead documents the very destruction of the very thing we present as providing the underlying value of our work.
An attractive image, yes. But I'm concerned about how readily we seem willing to put on blinders about what it shows.
Sorry, but it has to be said.
Take care,
Dan, who is not exactly a "purist" about photography, but who thinks that lines have to be drawn somewhere.
