Time for some "Imagination"

I know, I know, it's been a YEAR since I updated my blog. Blogs are dead anyway, right? I remember when blogs were the hot thing and the next big thing was the "vlog"...the concept of a blog but with video's....I guess that became YouTube...or Facebook? I dunno.


Well anyway, I decided I should catch up a bit and share the story behind my latest published image, I call "Imagination".


And the story goes...


3AM, I wake up to the sound of a lovely harp playing in the distance...groggy, I look toward the front of the MoHo (aka "motorhome") and realize it's just my iPhone telling me it's time to get up...instead of some vixen beauty playing me an early morning melody.

It's time to get up and go SHOOT!

I'm in the eastern Sierra's for the week conducting two Aperture Academy Death Valley workshops. Mid week I'm doing some shooting of my own. Last weeks group was a blast and there are many familiar faces for this weekend so it should prove to be a great weekend of photography for all.

So, I drive out of my camp spot and head off for a shoot that I've had on my bucket list for about three years now -- Piute Indian Petroglyphs. Weather in the Sierra's hasnt been on my side so I've been doing a lot of night shooting given it's so very nice and dark over here.

Back up two days...

With vague information gathered from about 10 different sources...I had, what I thought, was enough guidance to locate these amazing petroglyphs. The first day I hiked and drove quite a bit, with no success. That afternoon I phoned the ranger station in hopes of some help...no dice. They wouldnt tell me! And, now that I've been there I understand why...this place MUST remain extremely difficult to find for it's very preservation. I even have some hesitation with the image in that I do not want people flocking to this location.

No, I wont tell you where it is. I'm not being a jerk, you're welcome to go but you must have the same utmost respect for this place as I do, and you must go through the same challenges I did. And I request that if you do ever go, and find it, that you keep it's location only to yourself. I say all of this becuase I recently photographed some Petroglyphs in Capitol Reef National Park and was sickened by the defacing and distruction I witnessed on the artifacts :(

Enough of my soap box...on with the post...

So I'm on the highway on my way to the trailhead. It had taken me two days of hiking several canyons, searching for any signs that I was in the right area. Finally, and yes it's always the last place you look...bingo. I sat in awe, looking at each sketching in the stone...seeing things like turtles, fish, deer and the most strange of all, what appeared to be a jelly fish. I was amazing by the detail and level of patience it must have taken to create this giant pictograph panel...and could not stop wondering what drove the people of this era to document with such persistance and imagination.

I very carefully setup my gear on the edge of the rock surface and shot a series of 5 minute exposures. The first 30 minutes or so I tested a variety of settings until I had just what I wanted. Then, the real shooting began. It was nearly 445am now and I new the light in the sky would begin to grow in intensity, even though to my nake eye it was still nearly pitch dark (moonless night). I continued to shoot in 5 minute frames all the way into the morning twilight...carefully adusting my ISO down in small increments to not ruin an exposure. If I were to fumble now, I'd have a gap in my star trails and that would ruin the entire final result.

Why 5 minute exposures? Why not one long exposure?

Digital has an achilles heel...the sensor heats up during long exposures and this leads two a couple of issues -- noise and "hot" pixels. Both are not good for a quality image. So, by taking 5 minute exposures, all exactly back to back, you keep the noise manageable and help avoid hot pixels (I still had a few on the 1Ds Mark III).

But then what?

Then, you take each image into Photoshop and stack them in layers...with the "lighten" adjustment selected on each layer. This allows you to merge the images together, thus giving you the single continugous star trails. Then, one final image for the foreground where I used my trusted "walmart" plastic wrap latern. If you dont know what that means, you can read about that here.

I really love my lantern for light painting, now that I have it all pimped out with orange plastic to cast a nice warm and even light :)

So anyway, there you have it...I call it "Imagination". I'll have a BIG print up in the gallery in the coming days.

PS: It was awesome to hear the coyotes yipping in the distance as I sat waiting on my exposures...everywhere I go I seem to hear coyotes...I knew feeding them crockpot was a bad idea...they always come back for more!