Copyright ©2020 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The last bridge to the stars perhaps?
Nikon D810| Nikkor 18mm f/3.5 Ais| PS CC 21.2.1| Single Frame
more to come…
Wordless Weds. Perseids and the Milky Way
Category: Milky Way
Whatever Weds. Stargazing
Copyright © 2020 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I went out Saturday night to shoot the Milky Way and Comet C/2020 F3 “Neowise”. It was a gorgeous night with perfect weather for it. I’ve only got one image ready to share.
Here’s the Milky Way with Jupiter the brightest planet to the left of the Milky Way and little bitty Saturn to left of it.
I used my old Legacy Nikon 18mm f/3.5 Ais manual focus lens for this shoot. I light-painted the log and grass in the foreground, but this lens is so bright it picked up the light spill from the setting Moon in the background too. I forgot it was this bright, and I love the colors it renders. It’s going to live in my bag for the rest of the summer.
In other news, I’m just about out of memory on this desktop computer so we’ve bought a new faster one with more memory. I think we’re installing and transferring all my programs to it tomorrow. If all goes well I’ll be online checking out your blogs as usual and replying to any comments after that, but if not…I’ll be back when I can! Wish us luck!
Nikon D810| Nikkor 18mm f/3.5Ais| 25seconds| ISO 3200| Manual Mode| Single Frame processed in PS CC 21.2.1
more to come…
Whatever Weds. The Milky Way over Spooner Lake
Copyright ©2020 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright ©2020 Deborah M. Zajac
A good friend Gordon from (undiscoveredimagesmoung us)was visiting nearby and reached out to me to meet up and have a redo shoot at Spooner Lake where we tried to shoot sunset and hoped to shoot the Milky Way last year, but we were rained out. We did have a beautiful double rainbow there though.
We met last night and thankfully the wind died down and there were no clouds so we had a clear sky to view the Milky Way and the stars.
The light across the lake is a maintenance yard where the state keeps heavy equipment like snowplows and stuff.
My friend brought a neat little flashlight that emitted a wonderful soft warm light that he used to light paint the rocks on the lakeshore; it compliments the lights across the lake en mon avis. Doesn’t it look like a lovely and inviting village over there? It’s just a maintenance yard. Lighting can be magical amiright?
Even without wind, it got cold up here in the mountains. it’s above 7000 feet here-I couldn’t feel my toes! When I drove out to go home my car told me it was 37 degrees outside and to be mindful of ice on the road! I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It was wonderful seeing old friends and stargazing. Ah, Summer Nights with friends. Does it get better than this?
Nikon D810| Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G| PS CC 21.1.2| Topas DeNoise Ai and Sharpen Ai
…more to come
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Whatever Weds. The Milky Way
Copyright © 2020 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I woke up really early last week and the sky was cloudless so I thought I’d go out back and photograph the Milky Way. The light-pollution is worse than I remember! This was at 3:49 A M!
Jupiter and Saturn are still shining brightly over the Pinenut Mountains. Mars has marched so far East it’s out of the frame.
What do you do when you wake up in the wee hours of the mornin?
Nikon D810|Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G| SunDisk Digital Film| PS CC 21.1.1
more to come…
Whatever Wednesday: Reach for the Stars
Copyright ©2019 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I met some girl-friends in Lee Vining this past week-end for a long weekend of camping and photography.
One of the things we wanted to do was some night photography. With the Moon rising in the wee hours of the morning we had several hours of the dark sky to work with.
After sunset which wasn’t too colorful, we went searching for a neat foreground to accompany a Milky Way image. We found this wonderful dead tree on a country road. We had a lot of fun shooting it and admiring the stars is always so peaceful.
If you look closely you’ll see I managed to capture several shooting stars in this frame.
The bright object above the tree is Jupiter.
I have quite a few images to share in future posts from this week-end that include Wild Mustangs, a Ghost town at night, and some landscapes.
I hope you’re all having a great week!
Single Frame| Nikon D810| Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G@2.8|IS0 3200|20s| Manual Priority| Tripod
more to come…
Whatever Weds. Night View
Copyright ©2019 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I’m still packing. I probably will be taping up the last box and running it to the moving truck as they’re pulling down the door and revving up the engine to take off for my new home!
We’ve been taking stuff over that we think we’ll need before the movers arrive, and spending the night when we can. I’ve been waiting for Milky Way season to be back in our Hemisphere. What is she talking about the Milky Way is always there, you’re probably thinking. It is, but the Galactic Center is only visible in the Northern Hemisphere April through mid-September. I’ve been anxiously waiting to see how it will look from my new backyard/patio since I have a southern unobstructed view.
I set my alarm for the wee hours of the morning to find out. Lookie there! I was doing my happy dance.
There’s a lot more light pollution than I thought there would be, and the Moon while really low was 40 minutes from setting adding more light to the sky. The street lamps added our house and the neighbor’s shadows on the fairway below.
I’m already eyeing trails to explore for dark skies in the upcoming months.
The movers come in 9 days! I’m so ready to be moved and settled in.
Back to packing, and notifying those that need to know I’ve got a new mailing address.
I’m sure I’m forgetting someone.
Hope you all have a great week!
Nikon D810| Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G@ f/2.2| ISO 3200| Manual Priority|Hoodman STEEL Digital Film| PS CC 2019
more to come…
Wild Weds. 38/52 Lady Boot Arch and the Milky Way
Copyright ©2018 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I mentioned in last week’s post here that my friends and I had ventured a bit further south while in the Eastern Sierras over Labor Day week-end. We went very nearly to the farthest southern end to the Alabama Hills Recreational Area. If you’ve ever watched any old Western Cowboy movies you’ve seen this area. It’s rugged, rocky, and beautiful.
Also it’s remarkable in that the road to this area is also the road that is known as Mt. Whitney Portal. One takes this road up to the staging area to begin your trek up Mt. Whitney which is the tallest mountain in the lower 48 of the United States.
There’s a very famous natural arch among photographer’s in the Alabama Hills Recreational Area that features a very nice view of Mt. Whitney. I was blessed and fortunate to photograph the arch called Mobius Arch back in 2012 just before sunrise. Mt. Whitney is framed by the arch in my image seen here. Back then no one read my blog. I am thankful for those of you who have found me since then!
For this trip I suggested a less famous, less photographed arch called Lady Boot Arch, or Boot Arch, or…it has a few other names if you do a search on the internet for it. My friends were open to the idea so we scouted it in the afternoon before the shoot, and were happy with it so we went back to town for dinner then met near the arch before sunset for an evening of photography fun. We had plenty of time to get our compositions in focus, and set up the lights to light up the arch and foreground rocks. Laura brought her warm tea lights to light up the arch interior, and I had my trusty flash light with a gel to paint the rocks in the foreground. I’m not that skilled at light painting so, I passed my torch to Laura who does have the touch, and skill in that area.
Here’s the image I made that I like best. It’s a two frame composite image. I processed the sky/milky way image from the raw file to look very close to how it looked that night, and blended it with an image of the foreground light painted to highlight the rock formations and lighted arch. I was hoping to get one image that had both sky and foreground close enough to what I saw to be able to edit and develop that, but sadly I didn’t have one with the foreground just right. Which is why you light paint more than you think you need, and plan on blending frames if needed. I’m chuffed ( read delighted! for those that don’t get British English slang) with the result. It was super fun to shoot, and I would do it again in a nano second! I hope you like the tale, and image nearly as much as I had fun making it.
Some technical stuff… Mars is shining brightest in the sky on the left of the Boot and Milky Way, and in the dark lane of the Milky Way very near the left edge directly across from Mars is Saturn shining bright, out of frame was Jupiter too, but I cropped it out in favor of a stronger composition. Thank you Peter! He was the best teacher I ever had on cropping for the composition. When I got all my frames uploaded I saw that this one had several meteors or shooting stars in the frame. One heading into the Milky Way from the left, and one beside Mars, and two lower and to the right of Mars. They’re faint but there!
Did I tell you how chuffed I was?
The sky is filled with billions of stars out here. It’s breath taking, and I can’t explain in words how amazing, awesome, as well as beautiful it is, and just, How. Small. I. Felt while viewing it, and how just as I know it while standing on top of mountain that God is real and there. He was here too. This is my chapel, my cathedral, my Holy Place. This. THIS Feeds My SOUL.
It’s mid September now, so this is the last image I’ll be making of the Milky Way until next April or May. The Galactic Center…that wonderfully rich milky bit very close to the tip of Lady Boot Arch’s top is headed to the southern hemisphere now. It’s their turn to see the richest part of the arm of our galaxy. I will miss it, and yearn for its return as I do every year.
I am behind with emails, and blogs again, and I’m afraid I’m going to be behind for a bit longer. I will catch up!
I hope you’re all having a lovely week.
Nikon D810| Nikkor 16mm f/2.8 fisheye lens| Hoodman Steel Digital Film| PS CC 2018
more to come…
https://circadianreflections.com/2012/01/12/sunrise-in-alabama-hills/
Circadianreflections Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.