Wordless Wednesday

Takeoff..

Human light show...

Nature's light show...

Wordless Wednesday - Desert Edition

Shyla among the red rock towers at sunset

Shooting Star at K's Rock - A Sign from the Heavens?

Starry Sunday

I love taking star photos when we're in the desert. The sky is so dark and the stars shine brilliantly. Often, there are unique rock formations to use as the backdrop for the stars.

At one of our campsites, I desperately wished that the view toward these cliff walls would yield good star photos. Alas, the cliff walls are to the west, and I've never managed to get good night photos that include the distinctively sculpted cliff walls.

To the north of the campsite, there is an active earthquake fault. Over eons, the fault has thrust "stuff" up above the ground to make a wall of unique-looking rock. It's reddish, and its shape is pleasing for photos.

So, I set up my camera there on several nights, with the rocks over the fault in the foreground and the North Star in the background. I tried different camera settings each night. One tough part of our camping trips, as a photographer, is that I cannot look closely at my photos or process them until I get home (because we have no access to electricity sources and no laptop with us).

That means that I try different settings for my star photos each night, hoping to learn later which one was best. For this site, I believe that nailed the settings best on our second night there. This photo is a composite of 4 hours and 15 minutes of 4 minute exposures with 5 seconds between exposures to let the camera store the files. I have an "intervalometer" to control my camera, opening and closing the shutter at pre-programmed times, so I can sleep while it does its work.

The camera kept taking photos through moonrise, and the reddish hue of the rocks is from the moon that has just risen off to the right of the frame. I used a computer program to superimpose all the exposures so we can see the star trails.

After a couple of years of experimenting with star trail photos, I have to say that this one is my favorite so far. If you look very very carefully, you can see a faint shooting star that streaked from the top of the photo, just to the left of the North Star.

R agrees! He gave this photo two dew claws up!

Happy Starry Sunday!

Sky Sunday

The sky's beauty truly shines in the desert. Here was the moon setting over a sculpted rocky cliff.

And Shyla standing in the desert with the red cliffs and blue sky behind her.

Millions and millions of stars shined each night. The Milky Way...

A Shooting Star over a cliff...

One night, the clouds rolled in while my camera was busy taking star photos as I slept. A rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning awakened me. I rushed out to save my camera from the rain that was about to fall, and I discovered that my camera had captured the cliff at the instant of a flash of lightning. It turned the cloudy sky purple.

What an incredibly beautiful world we live in!

The Last Idyllic Desert Day

Although we were in the desert for a week, it turned out that we had only two sunny days - the first two days.

At that time, we didn't know that multiple events, including the weather, were about to turn against us.

Shyla high-fived at sunset on our second day. We all thought that we'd hit the weather window absolutely perfectly.

And, she gazed to the horizon. I think that the colors of the red rock desert complement a chocolate Lab's fur and golden eyes beautifully. In fact, the painting of Angel K, shown in the upper right sidebar, was created by Kathleen Coy based on a desert sunset photo of her.

At the west end of K's Rock, the sky turned sublime colors after the sun had gone to bed.

And the dried wildflowers, which we saw in bloom when we camped there back in May, looked pretty against the backdrop of the orange sky.

After dark, the sky was still clear, and I took multiple photos, over about 30 minutes, to create "star trails" around the North Star. I combined all the short exposures to make the photo below. The meteor that I showed you in a previous post streaked through the sky while I took these many exposures.

I never cease to be astounded by the beauty of our Earth. Can you believe that our sky puts on a show like that one every clear night? I wish that I could be in the desert for even more incredible starry nights!

The next day was when things changed - our weather luck and our LabMobile luck. We made the best of it, but there were no more warm, relaxing, and idyllic days. More about that in a future post.

A Sign from the Heavens

Because of winter weather in the Utah desert, we had to try to slip our camping trip into a window of good camping weather. On the day that we had initially planned to depart, the Utah desert was getting 6-12" of snow dumped on it. The snow went on for days and the temperatures were very cold. In fact, the snowfall was equal to the usual total snowfall for the entire winter in the canyonlands area.

So, we waited while anxiously checking the forecast every hour or so. Finally, we spotted what appeared to be the last day of bad weather in Utah and the start of a week of sunshine. So, we pointed the LabMobile toward the Utah desert, driving through the remains of the snowstorm.

We arrived in the afternoon, and when we approached our first planned camping spot, it immediately became obvious that it was impossibly mired in snow and very sticky mud. So, we revamped our plans, heading for a spot that we call "K's Rock".  We've named it that because remember a wonderful time there with K on her last trip to the desert. It turned out that K's Rock was planted in the midst of a relatively dry area. We had no problems driving, mountain biking, hiking, or running on 4WD roads and trails near K's Rock. So, it felt like paradise.

We thought that we had hit the weather window perfectly. The first night seemed to promise an amazing vacation of clear skies and relaxation. As many of you know, I love night photography, particularly in the desert on a clear night. So, I pulled out my tripod, and I set up my camera to take many exposures of the night sky, with plans to make photos of the the stars "spinning" around the North Star by combining the exposures. I haven't yet processed all of those exposures because one image captured my full attention.

I was lucky enough to capture a meteor plummeting into the Earth's atmosphere behind K's Rock.

A sign from the heavens? I think so. K is always with us. Always and forever.

A Change of Scenery

We had a brief change of scenery from our snowy mountain peaks and pine forests to the rocky canyonlands of Utah.

I adore the desert sky. It's so dark that the Milky Way stands out, and zillions of stars glitter overhead.

I have a few stories and photos to share... in future days. I hope to be around to visit many of you very soon!

Wordless Wednesday: Springtime

In the desert...

In the mountains...