Mesmerized

dseidman

On this clear and chilly night at Mount Rainier National Park a nearly full moon shown overhead, bright enough that a headlamp would only be superfluous as I made my way down the winding trails. With absolute stillness in the air and not another person for miles, there was a certain enchantment to the landscape.
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The moon drifted across the sky and ultimately disappeared behind Mount Tahoma. The ambient light quickly waned, and the sky succumbed to the darkness as it climatically made its way from east to west, exposing the spine of the Milky Way with billions upon billions of points of light glittering the night sky. The shadow of the mountain remained visible in the distance with the faint glow of climbers’ headlamps as they made their early-morning ascent of Rainier’s North face.
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No photograph could adequately capture the immensity of the scene that lay before me.







_________________
Canon EOS 5D Mark II & Canon 17-40mm f/4L
Focal length: 17mm
Shutter: 20 seconds
Aperture: f/4
ISO 5000
*Four exposures were stacked in post-processing to reduce noise.

ian408

Dig it. Love it.

I have a suggestion. In the earlier morning, before the sun even thinks about rising--the sky is changing, poke your head out of the tent and check out the Milky Way. It's much more blue. Check it out

shniks

This is a really good shot. I love the detail and of course the stars...


Excellent...


EDIT: I am a little curious as to how you managed to avoid the star trails with 4 shots. Were they 20 seconds each or 5 seconds for a total of 20 seconds?

Cheers,

kdog

Fabulous!

I remember one of the first shots you posted in this forum was a star shot like this. Awesome work.

Cheers,
-joel

Tharhawk

Awesome work man. I love the climbers lights high on the emmons. Great stuff.

thapamd

Great job, Danny! Love the color you got in the sky!

Awais Yaqub

Amazing, Danny this is so beautiful !

hawkeye978

Beautiful. Wonderful contrast between the details in the sky and on the ground.

d7freestyler

WOW!

Eia

It gives me the sensation that I am there looking at the sky...

Tango

dseidman wrote:

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No photograph could adequately capture the immensity of the scene that lay before me.
.

amen

VayCayMom

amazing, thanks for sharing!

JackieCPhotography

Wow! Just incredible!

Marc Muench

Awesome I am guessing you blended two exposures, but you did such a good job, it is difficult to tell.

I understand what Ian is saying about the color of the sky at that time of the night/morning but.............. this looks good

christinamae

I LOVE the sky and the climbers lights!!!

dseidman

ian408 wrote:

Dig it. Love it.

I have a suggestion. In the earlier morning, before the sun even thinks about rising--the sky is changing, poke your head out of the tent and check out the Milky Way. It's much more blue. Check it out

Thanks. As this was taken the eastern sky was already starting to get kind of bright. I couldn't hang around much longer, as I wanted to get to Tipsoo Lake for the sunrise. I'll remember this for next time though.

dseidman

shniks wrote:

This is a really good shot. I love the detail and of course the stars...


Excellent...


EDIT: I am a little curious as to how you managed to avoid the star trails with 4 shots. Were they 20 seconds each or 5 seconds for a total of 20 seconds?

Cheers,

Thanks, Nikhil! There were four shots, exposed for 20 seconds each. When I went to blend them together to average the noise out, I had to align them because of the movement the stars made in each shot.

dseidman

kdog wrote:

Fabulous!

I remember one of the first shots you posted in this forum was a star shot like this. Awesome work.

Cheers,
-joel

Good memory.
That photo was taken three years ago with a Canon 20D and much less knowledge on how to do this. I've been wanting to return for a long time to redo it properly and I finally got my chance.

dseidman

Tharhawk wrote:

Awesome work man. I love the climbers lights high on the emmons. Great stuff.

Thank you. It was a pretty sweet sight.

dseidman

thapamd wrote:

Great job, Danny! Love the color you got in the sky!

Thanks but I wish there was a little less light on the horizon. The moon had set about an hour before this was taken but there still seemed to be a glow behind the mountain.

dseidman

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Amazing, Danny this is so beautiful !

I'm glad you like it!

dseidman

hawkeye978 wrote:

Beautiful. Wonderful contrast between the details in the sky and on the ground.

Thank you. The previous version I made of this scene had a pretty boring background. This time I wanted some trees and a meadow. It was very dark out so I had to do a little light painting with my headlamp.

dseidman

d7freestyler wrote:

WOW!

That's how I felt when I was standing there taking all this in. I'm glad you were able to say the same thing after seeing this.

dseidman

Eia wrote:

It gives me the sensation that I am there looking at the sky...

That's what I was going for!
Thanks for the comment.

dseidman

AaronNelson wrote:

amen

It's true but I gave it a try anyway.

dseidman

VayCayMom wrote:

amazing, thanks for sharing!

You're welcome. Thanks for commenting!

dseidman

Marc Muench wrote:

Awesome I am guessing you blended two exposures, but you did such a good job, it is difficult to tell.

I understand what Ian is saying about the color of the sky at that time of the night/morning but.............. this looks good

Thanks, Marc. The only blending I did was for averaging out the noise. The mountain really was that bright. There was so much starlight that I guess the snow was able to reflect it. The immediate foreground was brightened via my headlamp.

dseidman

christinamae wrote:

I LOVE the sky and the climbers lights!!!

Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

schmoo

Last weekend while on top of the White Mountains, some hikers we were chatting up mentioned how beautiful the Milky Way is when you're climbing. I'd never seen it before - but now I have! Just gorgeous, and I really, really dig the lights of the climbers on the mountains, too.

dseidman

schmoo wrote:

Last weekend while on top of the White Mountains, some hikers we were chatting up mentioned how beautiful the Milky Way is when you're climbing. I'd never seen it before - but now I have! Just gorgeous, and I really, really dig the lights of the climbers on the mountains, too.

It's really incredible, isn't it? It's too bad that most people rarely get to view it.

ront

Danny, pretty much no words to describe how incredible your photo is!! Our Creator paints the skies every day and you have done an outstanding job at capturing one of His creations. Extremely well done!!

Ron