The "Milky Way" test of a boondocking site
I know there are many definitions of boondocking, and that is a good thing. But here is one possible test -- if you are not in a campground and you can see the Milky Way under clear skies, you are re...
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Well, I am stuck in town due to work, wishing I could go camping. So (instead of working) I happened to stumble across a shot I took almost two years ago that I had never tried to "develop" -- it was just the dim raw image. After a few minutes of fooling around on Lightroom, voila!
This was taken just after a fresh dusting of snow had fallen on Wheeler Peak in Nevada, at Great Basin National Park. The brightest area of the Milky Way is (I think) the "galactic center," which is most visible during the summer and early autumn -- this shot was taken in late September. Just to get the full effect, imagine that you are at Mather Overlook in the late evening, at 9000 feet -- it is in the high 20s, and breezy. There is no one around, except for saintly DW who puts up with my night-time photo shoots:
Click For Full-Size Image.
In case anyone is interested in the technical details, this was a 30 second exposure at an ISO of 3200. The trick to this shot was in getting the snow to come out white -- for some reason, no matter how I adjusted the white balance, the snow was faintly purple or blue. So (and here is the trick) I wiped it with a brush and set the color saturation to zero, which washed out all of the unwanted tones.
The dark webbing in the Milky Way is not an artifact of the photo -- it is real. Those are thick lanes of interstellar dust, partially obscuring the center of the galaxy.
Is it summertime yet?
This was taken just after a fresh dusting of snow had fallen on Wheeler Peak in Nevada, at Great Basin National Park. The brightest area of the Milky Way is (I think) the "galactic center," which is most visible during the summer and early autumn -- this shot was taken in late September. Just to get the full effect, imagine that you are at Mather Overlook in the late evening, at 9000 feet -- it is in the high 20s, and breezy. There is no one around, except for saintly DW who puts up with my night-time photo shoots:
Click For Full-Size Image.In case anyone is interested in the technical details, this was a 30 second exposure at an ISO of 3200. The trick to this shot was in getting the snow to come out white -- for some reason, no matter how I adjusted the white balance, the snow was faintly purple or blue. So (and here is the trick) I wiped it with a brush and set the color saturation to zero, which washed out all of the unwanted tones.
The dark webbing in the Milky Way is not an artifact of the photo -- it is real. Those are thick lanes of interstellar dust, partially obscuring the center of the galaxy.
Is it summertime yet?
