Paint Mines

Last night I was able to meet a friend at Paint Mines for some night astro photography. To visit this location at night required a $100 permit, but afforded us the entire place to ourselves. We arrived during the blue hour and began meandering down different paths to try and find rocks and hoodoo formations in sandstone that we could shoot with a rising MW in the background. On the way in to the center of Paint Mines I took some sunset pictures with some angry storm clouds.

Once we were in the small washes I feel like we navigated nearly all of them and I used GPS Tracker to help set waypoints at sights we thought would be good for later. Once darkness started to fall I felt like we had travelled a lot of distance, but didn't have the ideal rocks that we'd seen in Mike Pach's workshops. We needed to find THE LOCATION and take some test shots.

Paint Mines w Milky Way

We did find a small "canyon" that I liked, but once we took a test shot we discovered power lines and poles that we dodged by positioning a FG boulder formation to block them. I like the result there though we had another problem for about 30 minutes with a line of clouds that came through. We moved to try other locations which turned out to be okay, not great. By that time at around 11:30 I was tired. I don't think we ever realized the same location as we had hoped, but the final results were decent.
  • Things I learned on this trip:
  • Give more time to hunting down locations while it is still light.
  • Move around a lot to find the ideal composition.
  • Clouds and weather can always get in the way of a shoot. 
  • Even with two shooters, we can still occasionally get in each other's way both physically and with headlamps, and tripods and bags.

Here's a link to a few shots that turned out okay. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Outer Banks and Beyond

Image
 I set out in late April to join a workshop to be held in the Outer Banks of North Carolina to shoot piers, lighthouses, and beaches - hopefully with the Milky Way gracing us with dark sky views. We also had a few days to head over to an inner banks animal refuge where we might see bears, alligators and other wildlife. I stayed in Rodanthe at the KOA (in an actual room) arriving a few days early to get adjusted. I also planned an extra few days after to shoot wild horses on the beach of Carova further north.  Sunset in OBX Our biggest challenge was cloudy weather and also the timing of the Moon as it approached a New Moon after our workshop ended (but I'd still be in the area).  My first morning I rose before sunrise and shot the beach at the KOA which turned out to be fairly nice. I was able to rise early most other mornings and shoot the sunrise which was a lot of fun! I discovered that the colors and hues along the beach and in the water reveal amazing pastels and colo...
Read more

Japan 2024

Image
My wife and I enjoyed a trip to Japan in July. We toured across the country for 11 days and had a great time learning about culture, food and so much more. On this this trip the focus was not photography and wa geared more towards learning about Japanese culture and seeing the sites and cities.  We ventured on all forms of transport inclining the famed Shinkansen bullet train, ferries, airplanes, taxis/limos, Japan Rail subways and trains. I think I liked the Shinkansen the best - he had fancy first-class rail cars we glided upon. From a photo-taking perspective I found difficulty in using my gear. There were specific rules and restrictions in the many of the iconic locations we visited. In crowded areas one could not use a tripod to set up that perfect shot or use a filter to get a longer exposure for example. That didn't stop me from using my iPhone ALOT of the time. My photos from the journey came out pretty well. I have a mix of shots from my SONY A7 III and the iPhone 13Pro....
Read more

Learning every day

Image
 Today I spent a fair amount of time thinking, reading and wanting to understand ND filters. ND stands for Neutral Density and this type of filter seems to be a great tool for lowering the amount of light entering a lens. A good ND filter consistently limits all wavelengths of the visible spectrum equally. Now you'd think that for a guy like me interested in night photography I would not want to limit the light coming in for astrophotography... and that's true. But I've been thinking a lot about using ND filters with water and clouds and other things that move in a static field. So I would use a filter like this with day-time photography; golden hour and sunsets & sunrises too. For my upcoming trip to Iceland there will be opportunities to shoot ice on beaches, snow fields and snow caves! All of these things involve water in some form and for the liquids kinds I want to play with time using these ND filters, I think I am particularly good at understanding technology. I...
Read more