Death Valley from a different perspective

Update again...

It's taken almost a month but I'm finally able to get through the day without falling asleep. Not sure what was wrong but it seems to have passed. I'm working on my images (and videos) and learning a whole lot of new stuff. I've got a ton of new software which is both a help and a hindrance to getting things finished. I now have 3 new packages dedicated to video ... DaVinci Resolve, Fusion and Nuke ... and they are lots of fun and a huge challenge. I've been working especially with Fusion which is a high-end compositing program for making really impressive sequences. The first project was to take the Point Vicente Lighthouse in LA and combine it with a sunset taken at the same location to get a really stunning sunset behind the lighthouse. It took me over a week to get everything as I wanted since I had zero experience with the software and not much experience with compositing. It was a lot of work to get everything finished. I had to make a series of masks in Photoshop that isolated the lighthouse and a palm tree from the sky background ... 136 to be exact ... one at a time. That took 3 days of careful work. I also had to work around some limitations in the free version of the software. They limited 'output' to UHD (3840 x 2160) but I was working with DSLR frames that were much bigger. Despite trying to output UHD at the end, the software kept refusing to render the final images because at intermediate stages in the node processor the image size was much bigger. So I had to downsize my base images to UHD and even then had to do some fancy footwork to get the final images to output. Forcing me to downsize my initial images is really a bummer for me as I want to work with maximum resolution up to the very end. I'm not the only person upset by this and there's some griping on the forums about this limitation. I'm sure they will eventually change as getting this software into the hands of many amateurs who will say good things about it is important for them to compete against Nuke, the current standard.

Anyway, that sequence is almost done. I'm just tweaking things a bit to get the best video I can. I want it to be spectacular as it will be one of the lead sequences in my video. Only the best make it as I'm hoping this is a showcase for my work.

Death Valley from a different perspective

I was in Death Valley twice this trip. First time, in April, I wanted to take some astro sequences but the moon was full and not many stars appeared. To get the best star shots you need absolute dark and a full moon isn't going to get you there so I left and went on to LA. A few weeks later I came back to a new moon and things were much better. I spent a few days in the valley, sleeping in my truck and letting my camera run unattended. Not too many people wandering around in the desert at night although the hazards aren't all that bad so the equipment is very safe. No big, nasty animals out on the salt where I took my milky way shots. I did see a small coyote in Furnace Creek (he was walking down the main road in the morning, just ambling along at his own pace and didn't give me a second glance as he walked by) and a small red fox out near Bad Water but he was too hot to give a damn about me. Biggest problems are on the sand dunes with sidewinders and scorpions at night.

Last night in the valley I wanted to get a panorama of the entire valley from Dante's Overlook. You basically leave the park heading east toward Vegas until you see signs for the overlook to the right. Take a narrow, twisting, steep road 13 miles or so, passing several commercial mining operations and a very steep final climb of 15 degrees, until you get to the overlook. The whole valley is spread out below including the salt flats. It's a very impressive sight. As usual I waited until near sunset and then found a good spot for my pano. The sky had some interesting clouds but it was pretty obvious a red sunset was not in the offing. So I did what I could and took several sequences at different locations. This particular image shows the north end of the valley, from the salt flat to the sand dunes. It was a blue evening so what you see is what I saw. I could have warmed the image a bit but that's not true to the colors that were present and it looked fake.

Death Valley - 24mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Capitol Reef

Starting but...

I've been home 2 weeks now and, surprisingly, am still plagued by exhaustion. I'm sleeping a lot more than I should, much to the consternation of my wife and daughter. I just can't seem to get back on Moscow time no matter what I do. I've probably had one night of good sleep so far but most I get maybe 4 hours and wake up just as the sun comes up. Really not sure what's causing this but it's a major headache. I've been using a new asthma inhaler which sort of works but I still find myself short of breath much of the time. Maybe that's the issue ... the new med may be making me sleepy and I may be chronically short of oxygen. Oh well...

As for my processing, it's proceeding slowly. As I feared, many of my images are not all that impressive. I knew I had an issue with holding steady ... I've discovered that my sense of balance isn't what it used to be and that really messes with holding still during longer exposures. Even with stabilization turned on I find too many images are blurred and worthless. Add to that I wasn't really able to get in a groove with the new camera and too many of my images are not in focus or the exposures are wrong. Not sure yet what the problem was/is but I need to figure it out by next year. Probably just need to get time with the instrument so I can learn it's sweet spots. Really hope it's not the camera.

Photomatix & chromatic aberrations

Chromatic aberrations (CA) are the bane of  every photographer's work. They are a fact of life, an issue with every lens ever made. Because glass bends different colors of light at different angles, there are always issues with color fringing. This is especially an issue when an image goes from bright to dark. I'm sure you've seen them if you look at your pictures close enough. Photomatix, the HDR software, has the ability to remove CA but there's a problem. In some images, especially when there is a very strong transition from bright sun to heavy shade and it's very sharp, you tend to get bleeding from the bright area into the dark. This is an acute issue at higher f-numbers. Because of the way Photomatix works, it merges and tone-maps the various exposures before attempting to remove CA and that's an issue. If you have any of this bleeding in your brighter exposures, the resulting merged image has a very messy transition between light and dark and the CA algorithm can't handle the transition. That means you have an ugly fringe along the transition and it's really noticeable. You can't really fix this after the merge. So, to remove the issue you need to run a CA pass on the photos BEFORE putting them into Photomatix. I use the excellent CA in Lightroom which is available in the Develop module under "Lens Corrections". If you do this first and then use Photomatix the problem disappears. Check out the light/dark transition in today's image ... middle of the photo on the left side. No CA to be found but boy was there an ugly mess there without correction.

Capitol Reef

I had never heard of this national park until I saw it on the Utah map. It's been around for a long time but gets very little attention. It's really a hiker's park as there aren't a lot of things to see from the road. I also didn't have a lot of time there as the campground was full and there weren't a lot of places to pull off and sleep. All parks discourage your sleeping in the observation areas although I do on occasion break this rule in some of the larger parks. I even get a 'wink' from the rangers as they tell me it's not allowed. But Capital Reef was very adamant that I couldn't sleep in the park. So I decided to find a good spot for a sunset shoot and then move on. Little did I know that 'moving on' would entail driving for several hours on very dark mountain roads to find a rest area. Saw way too many large elk standing at the road's edge ... all it would have taken was for one to jump out in my path and I would have been ... literally ... roadkill. Driving at night in the mountains is not a good idea.

After driving up and down the only major park road I found a spot just south of the campground. These huge vertical walls just screamed out to be part of the image and the road had just the right curve to make it an interesting compositional element. I was fortunate that the sky cooperated with a massive, dark cloud bank in just the right spot. And the sky was completely open to the west so the sun could make it's contribution to the overall look. I parked and waited. As the show progressed I kept taking 5 image sequences, spaced 1 ev apart. It took a while but was worth it. The resulting image is the essence of Capitol Reef ... wild and utterly amazing.

Capitol Reef Sunset - 16mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,copyright CC BY-NC 4.0

Very Large Array, Socorro, New Mexico

The Trip from Hell

Sometimes it's just ordained that a trip doesn't work out. It can be weather or an accident or a personal situation ... anything can happen to take the wind out of your sails. Unfortunately, this trip home had pretty much all of these. You already know about my troubles with the US government and my investment advisor. After a week of fighting and angry words I finally freed up my funds and put them in another financial institution. Because of all the trouble my residency in Crimea caused I'll not be telling them about my plans anymore. They just know I'm in Europe and will be in touch when I return.

I'm back in Crimea now, the trip over. I didn't add to this blog as I was too angry and too distracted to actually write anything coherent. Also, I made a conscious decision to not process many of my images as I've found the whole hassle of doing that is just too hard and the results too unpredictable to be of any use. All I did was fire up my computer when I could and download all the images I'd taken so there was at the very least 2 of every photo. I processed a few images just to make sure I had something usable and to check out the new Canon 6D and the Samyang 14 mm, f/2.8 lens. Both are fine and take some really nice pictures. Now that I'm home I've started cataloging and arranging what I have and am developing a plan to work through them. I've found some really great images and more than a few that are not worth keeping. More on this in later blogs.

Back to the trip. It rained a lot more this time due to El Nino. I love rainy days but only the beginning and the end of the storms. It's then that I see the most dramatic skies and the most spectacular sunsets. But cloudy skies for days on end don't produce nice images and rain isn't really all that good for the equipment. So I spent far too many days sitting in my truck watching rain drops slide down my windshield. I also had an accident ... not the truck but my body ... and that limited my mobility somewhat. I twisted my knee (and probably tore a ligament) so I'm now wearing a knee brace which helps somewhat but I'm not a mobile as I'd like. Add to that the wet weather kept my asthma from really getting better meaning I had difficulty hiking any great distances or tackling difficult terrain. Unfortunately, much of the really impressive geography in the Southwest is only accessible by hiking.

But the biggest detriment to my trip was my attitude. After the war with my investment adviser and the horrible start to my trip I just couldn't gin up the enthusiasm needed to really do a first rate job. My first stop, LA, didn't help very much as I spent far too much time driving from one place to another and then struggling to find a place to park the truck where it would be left alone. Too much of LA is either pay to park (and very expensive) or no parking so I had to drive around to find a place where I felt the truck was not at risk. Instead of the 3-4 weeks I'd intended to spend I split after only 6 days. Once I was on the road it became an issue of dealing with large crowds everywhere. This year is the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service and they are pushing very aggressively to get people into the parks. It's working unfortunately. I often found the campgrounds filled and the parks overflowing with humanity. It's hard to shoot landscapes when they are overrun with bodies. I'll be spending far too much time this winter removing humans from my images. Not what I expected and a far cry from last year. So, by the half way point I was basically on autopilot, drifting from one park to the next without much enthusiasm. I wanted to go home with several weeks left. Not the way to make award winning images I'm afraid. But maybe I can save the effort with some really creative post work.  We'll see.

Anyway, the trip ended up on June 3rd with a very long trip back to Crimea. That, at least, was reasonably uneventful. I've got my equipment back in running condition and will start working on images in a few days, once I'm over the horrible jet lag. I've been home for 4 days and am still unable to function very well. Guess old age is catching up with me at last. Once I'm OK, I have 13,868 photos to look at. Many are timelapse sequences and I've got a lot of work to get them ready. As I didn't spend as much time in LA as I'd planned, I'm not going to do an exclusively LA video but will weave in all my best photos and the timelapse into a 'best hits' show. Probably will call it 'Wonderous...' and there are some amazing images to put there. Will take a while to get that together and hopefully have something ready by the year's end. Wish me luck.

Very Large Array

If you take I-25 south from Albuquerque to Socorro and take rt. 60 west about 50 miles you'll get to the Very Large Array (VLA), a massive radio telescope. It's an amazing place with these huge radio dishes arranged in a 3-pointed star spread out across the desert. I spent several hours talking to the senior engineer for the facility and hope, next year, to be given permission to spend a night photographing the array against the milky way. I did a timelapse of the main array and one of the dishes as they twisted and turned to track a target billions of light years away. I'll certainly include the video in my best hits show. What's so interesting about the array is it's sensitivity. The engineer told me the system could detect a cellphone signal from Jupiter. Now that's sensitive! They are currently studying black holes and other radio sources and doing some really interesting science. Turns out the radio frequency bands are extremely important to see things that are obscured by dust at most other frequencies.

This photo is a panorama I took at sunset. I was as close to the antennas as possible (the camera's electronics can do a real number on the receivers). It was a gorgeous sunset and the antenna were pointed in just the right direction. I've already printed a hard copy of this image and it's spectacular. Hope to frame it later this year. So, here's hoping ET phones home...

Very Large Array - 35mm(ff),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0