So I just got back from my yet-another-trip to White Mountains. This time I was scouting the "high" grounds, and found an amazing area where there are lots of beautiful Ancient Bristlecones (still) growing.
It's at around 12000 feet elevation, which is very high for trees as normally they don't grow over 11000 feet (that's a tree line after which you'll find only rocks, so not very photogenic unless there's also a lake/river and maybe some snow/ice).
I've got an epic weather this time! Sunset was very reddish, with full of small (and local) rainfalls, and the moon didn't rise until about 2 am, so I had big part of the night available to shoot the Milky Way and stars.
I would consider this trip as very successful, but....
At night my tripod fell down with my camera still attached. My Nikon 14-30mm f/4 S lens took the whole impact and as you can guess, broke. The glass is still OK but the barrel and hood is a history (hood is cheap, I replaced it already). I'll be sending it to Nikon in LA to see what they can salvage, hopefully it's all fixable.
Yes, steep and rocky grounds can be dangerous even to a three leggers
Update: I've just learned that Nikon in Los Angeles is still closed. They open for a little while and now closed it again. I'll ship it to New York
The last image was just me messing around with Photoshop. The sun is a photograph I took with my telephoto lens that had 1000x filter attached. It's a special filter I normally use to shoot (right before the totality happens) total eclipse. I'm waiting for the 2024 total solar eclipse, and as you can see, I'm already prepared
The foreground shot was taken at 24mm. I just combined both shots into this final image in PS.
What I'm looking for is a good spot with a nice tree I can zoom on while the sun is behind it (preferably at sunset). This shot is just what I think I would get if all elements of equations would align properly, and with this filter on. I'll figure it out.
But this images came out alright, I think for a composite shot....
The image with the Milky Way is also two images combined. One for the foreground, another for the Milky Way. Why? I took the Milky Way image with my cheap-o star tracker for which I paid maybe $300. I thought it won't work well but I was able to expose for a 153 seconds with an amazing results. This was a first time I've used it and I have to say I'm very happy with this star tracker.
Aug 18, 2020 at 06:14 PM
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