Category: Equipment

Why the Solar Eclipse is Cool

Total Solar Eclipse, 2017

I have been asked the last few weeks if I will be going to watch the solar eclipse. My answer is of course!

People ask why? What makes it so special? Think of a natural phenomenon which only comes around here every so often, last time in 2017 and next in 2044. Now think about all the sun rises and sunsets you have enjoyed over the years. Even they bring people together even though they occur every single day. It is always an exciting time when a beautiful sunrise or sunset occurs, especially if you are with friends or family and experiencing it together. It is the start or end of another day. In the case of the solar eclipse, yes, they happen somewhere every few years, but usually in far away places or in the middle of the oceans. So, the excitement is understandable. If you haven’t seen one you can only wonder what it is like.

Most of us will be standing with a crowd of folks we do not know, and they don’t know us. Yet this event has brought us all together from a diverse background to watch a wonder of nature. We will all be talking and pointing as the eclipse starts. And then the moment will come when it gets to the totality and the temp starts dropping 15 degrees and the sky goes dark and everyone gasps and is silent. Very small white “beads” appear for only a second, caused by the sun coming through the valleys of the moon’s mountains before the edge lights up in one bright spot called the Diamond. The white corona around the sun appears. We hear the birds and nighttime bugs come out, the ground has a pattern of what looks like the shadows of leaves, but is the shadows formed by the mountains of the moon dancing on the ground here on earth. We see the diamond at the edge of the moon for the second time as the moon begins to move off the sun. As the sun’s crescent edge reappears a roar of applause and shouting goes up from the crowd as everyone is amazed at what we all just saw together. There is an unspoken bond we all know. Then the crowd begins to thin out, except for the photographers staying to capture the end of the eclipse as the moon leaves the sun entirely in an hour or so.

I started planning this trip last summer. Looking for some cool places to be which could make for an interesting image along with the sun. Eventually had four places in mind. Kaskaskia State Park in Illinois along the Mississippi, Niagara Falls even though I thought the weather was risky at best, Hot Springs Arkansas with the mountains, and the Dallas area with my daughter and her family. Now it is only the weather which will determine the final place to be, so far looks like I’ll be going back to Kaskaskia, which will also make it a historical shot as the eclipse does not happen in the same place on earth except every 375 years. If you’ve never seen a total eclipse I encourage you to make some last minute plans.

May mother nature give us a chance to see her wonderous natural events again this year. Enjoy, Richard


Great Smoky Mountains – Fog

This year we need to do a third printing of my book on the park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Thirty Years of American Landscapes. I headed down in January for new snow images and went back last week to see about getting the synchronized fireflies and some star images. Sadly, not many synchronized fireflies had come out yet, a few but not many, and the weather was cloudy every night. What happens then? You change strategy and get images of the streams – which were running full because of the rain – and details of the mountains and the vistas with the fog lifting.

Here is the first set of images of the rain and fog. I’ll do a second posting of the rivers and streams later.

It may not be what you envisioned as the images you wanted to capture but you must quickly decide that is simply fine, I can make images of other subjects. I shot video as well as we will probably have a eBook version with some of the video clips.

I have never had a bad trip to the smokies in my 40+ years of going to one of my favorite places. Always feels like a place I know even though there are parts of the park I have not been to as of yet. Hope you enjoy the images. Stay tuned for more!

Cheers, Richard


Monument Valley Time-lapse

Images from Monument Valley, Arizona

On my recent trip to the Southwest, we stopped in Monument Valley for one night, too short of a time but that’s all the time we had. We stayed at The View Hotel on the Navajo Reservation which overlooks the Mitten and valley. Perfect location and many rooms have open porches for sky watching. Perfect! I set up two cameras for time-lapse. The main camera, a Canon 5D IV with the 16-35mm lens and another 5D IV with the 28-105 lens. I used the Pulse intervalometer by Alpine Labs for the timelapse.

The technical side. The camera with the 16-35mm lens was the main camera which did both nighttime star timelapses. It was set at ISO 2000 and f2.8 at 20 second exposures. The exposures were done every 30 seconds. The first timelapse in the film took 2 hours and 56 minutes to produce. I’ve seen people using higher ISO’s but haven’t done that yet to se how much noise there might be in the shots. These exposures were about 1 stop too dark. I lightened them among other adjustments in Lightroom. I also adjusted the kelvin temperature from 5500, down to 4500, to bring out the blue and blackness of the sky.

The timelapse of sunrise was done on the second camera with shots every 2 seconds with the settings ISO 100, F11 and shutter ranging from 1/13th to 1/40th of a second. If you look closely, you can see the wind blowing dust and a few small dust devils across the ground. By the time we had to leave there was a dust storm a brewing and it was hard to see the valley.

In post processing the timelapse I use the plugin from Timelapse+ Studio in Lightroom to create the key exposures and then make adjustments to these images and have the plugin adjust the images evenly across the length of each timelapse video.

One great thing with timelapse is if you are shooting from a hotel balcony you can fall asleep while it is playing out! OK, I woke up several times to check things which was good as the Milky Way was rising farther south than I thought even with the star apps I have to calculate it before a shoot. When I started the clouds looked like it could either get overcast or stay partly cloudy. One of those times it will work or not – but if you don’t go ahead and shoot it you can’t get it back!

Images from Monument Valley, Arizona

I hope you enjoy the still images and the video! If you have any questions just ask!

Cheers,

Richard

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The Annular Solar Eclipse 2021

This morning’s sunrise and the end of the “Ring of Fire” solar eclipse from Lighthouse Beach in Evanston. It was a beautiful morning to watch nature once again remind us how cool it is. This video was done over the 38 minutes of the end of the eclipse as the moon slipped by the edge of the sun. I compress it down to two minutes.

For those interested it was shot on a Canon 5D IV with the Canon 300mm lens with a 2x convertor making it 600mm. As the sun and moon drifted out of the top of the frame I would move the camera so there are several sequences. A 15 stop ND Filter was used once above the lake and in the sky only.

Enjoy!

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