Cloudy Echo Lake & Silver Plume

I headed out with what I thought was a good chance to shoot the Milky Way hanging lazily above Echo Lake at the base of Mt. Evans. Leaving Denver I noticed a cloud bank, but the forecast promised clear skies up in Idaho Springs. As I entered Idaho Springs the skies overhead looked clear, but there was a slow-moving bank of clouds I could not see due to the mountains blocking my view. Once I got up to Echo Lake about 20 minutes later those clouds loomed heavily. 

Those pesky clouds seemed to be clearing up slowly, but after a bit of time I could see that there was also wispier higher clouds that were gonna stick around. There were moments of clearness promising super clear stars at around 10500', but NOT tonight. While I was up there I watched the Moon setting across the lake and experimented with the Lumecubes and also hyper-focal distances. 

I really like my Tamron 17-28mm lens. It works so well for astrophotography. Through the lens the mountain flowers up close remained in focus while the stars were super sharp way out at infinity with manual focus - that's even at f/2.8! I am wondering about focus-stacking, but with this lens I think I can be as close at 11 feet and everything is still in focus.

The Lumecube RGB colors can be trickier, but I feel my happy color setting is at about 42, with 4200K at 1% Level. That's where I am with the Lumecube. More playing will come in time, but I feel like these settings are what I will use most of the time. The thing with the Lumecube is that even at 1% I have to aim the cube away from the foreground for light-painting purposes. It does take a bit of playing around with the setup.

As the Moon set there was still A LOT of light hanging around for about 45 minutes so I learned that it takes a longer time than just Moonset to have the Moon light be an issue. The Moonset was very nice and the light played with the lake and was fun to shoot. But as the clouds were not going away I decided I would go elsewhere and try something else. Even though it was late I decided to head west to Silver Plume and shoot some buildings I had spied on a day ride up to the mountains earlier. Only 15 minutes away I got up there after midnight and quietly parked across from the Silver Plume Museum - originally built as a school in the 1800s. 

The street light that I saw before was operational (unfortunately) so seeing the MW up there down the street was not going to work, but the building is eerie looking so I started shooting and took a lot of shots. I used the Lumecube (henceforth Lc) to light the front door and got some good shots.

Then I headed up the street very quietly and shot a cool old white chapel with a cute bell tower. There were trees obscuring the light coming from across the street and it made some odd shadows on the front of the church. I tried to use the Lc to fix that and it improved the light, but not perfect.

I moved on down the street and noticed the Mail Postoffice (I suppose) was open and light up, but didn't offer much of a good composition with cars in front. There are post boxes inside (probably for the entire town) so it stays open all the time I guess. 

Another block or so to the east I saw the Bread white was strangely light up brightly inside and out. I stopped and then noticed someone inside. I quietly got out my camera, tripod and Lc and set up across the street. The building had a lot of character, but the intensely bright inside lights made it hard to capture the outside well. I used the Lc to try to get some light on the outside when the guy inside noticed me. He could not figure out what was going on outside and he came to his window pressing his head against the glass. I waved and tried to make it so he could see me and eventually he waved back. It was funny, but also I was worried he would be angry with me. As he finished up he began turning out the lights inside preparing to leave. I continued shooting and as he came out he explained he thought there were aliens or something weird outside as he saw my Lc hovering in the air with its oddly colored light! I apologized for startling him and he laughed it off.

So since the clouds were not cooperating I used some MW and Moon images with my buildings form Silver Plume to form some composite images of what I had hoped would be neat photos.


Dread Bread

Asylum (School)

Chapel

Learned:

  1. Moonset doesn't mean a 1st quarter Moon's light is gone. Give it an ~extra hour.
  2. Lumecube light is still too strong at 1%, but sometimes you need all 100% to light a subject.
  3. Forecasting with Weather and Astrospheric (at least wout a subscription) isn't that accurate.
  4. Close Foreground subjects stay in focus with my Tamron 17-28mm, but I need to experiment with more close-focus situations to see how that plays out.


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