Foxtail pine startrails

JC · August 1, 2012

A foxtail pine (close relative of Bristlecone pines, live to ~2000 years in the Sierras) at the treeline, from a recent backpack.

rwells · August 1, 2012

Excellent image

Great exposure and comp!

Earache · August 1, 2012

Agree with Randy!
And, your capture of long trails gives an interesting look at the different colors of the sky objects.

JC · August 2, 2012

rwells wrote: »

Excellent image <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif" border="0" alt="" >

Great exposure and comp!

Earache wrote: »

Agree with Randy!
And, your capture of long trails gives an interesting look at the different colors of the sky objects.

Thanks. The exposure isn't too difficult to get, if you know <STRIKE> when nautical and civil dawn are.</STRIKE> what the moon is doing. Solar dawn is too late, usually, to get a good foreground/sky ratio.

Composure was a bit of a pain, since I was only using a gorillapod. I didn't want to set up on top of a bigger rock that would clear the foreground better and risk the camera toppling over (wind, marmots, sleepwalkers). I kind of like the way the foreground turned out though. It definitely would have been a different shot with a full on telescoping tripod.

Earache · August 2, 2012

If you are hanging-out with marmots and sleepwalkers, you do have other problems.

Cornflake · August 2, 2012

Beautiful!

Andy · August 2, 2012

Really well done!

red_zone · August 3, 2012

That is spectacular! I really like how the foreground turned out. Was this a one-shot or stacked?

JC · August 3, 2012

red_zone wrote: »

That is spectacular! I really like how the foreground turned out. Was this a one-shot or stacked?

Thanks! one of my best yet I think, I loved being out of a direct line with a big city.

This is about 185 two minute images stacks. The foreground illumination is exclusively moonlight, it was the last quarter moon, and rose about halfway through the series. Since it was only a quarter moon, only the last hour of shots had much foreground illumination. I said dawn before, I was misremembering my timing, I think AMS killed some crucial brain cells on my trip.

red_zone · August 3, 2012

Very neat. I suppose you set it up for automatically holding the shutter open for 2 minutes at a time... otherwise that's 6 hours of releasing the shutter every 2 minutes! I suppose this shot also takes quite a lot of planning - you want to be pointing North, you want something in the foreground, you don't want the moon to rise into the frame, etc.

I miss seeing the stars - In the mountains outside of Albuquerque there was virtually no light from the city, partially because of the thinner atmosphere, and you could see tons of stars and the milky way. Here in DC the sky looks purple or orange at night and even up and down the Blue Ridge you can see the glow of cities dotting the horizon.