Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes Sunset

What a terrible year...

It seems this has been a year of tragedy. Every time I turn on the TV there's some new disaster to be explained. All the wars, the terror attacks and even all the airplane crashes. Well today, Christmas day, is no different. We just learned that a Russian military transport plane crashed off the Black Sea coast from Sochi, Russia with 92 passengers aboard. These were not military fighters ... no, they were entertainers, heading for Syria to provide some diversion for the airmen and support personnel involved in the Syria civil war. 65 were members of the world famous Russian Army Choir (including singers, dancers and musicians) while there were crews from 3 different Russian TV stations and others. The greatest tragedy, however, is the death of Doctor Liza (I think that was her nickname), an emergency room physician who has been leading humanitarian rescue missions into both the Donbas, Ukraine, and in Syria. She had just received a humanitarian award from Putin a few weeks ago. She specialized in wounded children and had been a huge contributor to the survival of so may kids injured in these conflicts. Her loss is beyond tragedy. When will all this carnage end?

Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes Sunset

It's hard to take a bad picture in Death Valley. You have to really try to make something ugly. But there are special places and unique times when the images explode with color and amazing structure. This image is one of those special moments. I was at Mesquite Flats, on the sand dunes, waiting for just the perfect moment to snap this image. There were clouds in abundance and I just knew this would be special. I wanted to incorporate the sand dunes into the shot in a way that emphasized how the wind sculpts the sand into the most amazing shapes. I think it came out just the way I intended.

This photo contains a classic photo organization. It has a foreground (the sand), a middle ground (the purple mountains) and a background (the sky). It contains a lot of structure which draws the eye from the bright sky to the shimmering sand to the barely visible scrub brush in the middle ground. You just want to be there, sitting on the sand while the sun slides slowly behind the distant mountains. I didn't want to leave that spot but finally had to pull myself away or get lost on the dunes for the night. The rangers tell me there are sidewinders and lots of scorpions out there and they all come out once the sun goes down. Not an appetizing thought as it gets bitter cold and very, very dark.

This is a 5 image grouping, run through Photomatix to extract as much color as I could and then put into Lightroom for finishing. It was taken on my Canon 6D using the 16-35 f/4 zoom. That lens takes the most amazing pictures. I'm really happy with the combination. It's quickly become my go-to setup. I think this pictures shows why.

Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes - 35mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Old Woman and the Night Sky

Windows 10...

I've been holding off on upgrading my big workstation to Windows 10 because, quite frankly, I don't want to be constantly fighting with software and my operating system when I'm trying to do my images. It's hard enough getting everything right under the best of circumstances so adding in a balky new OS only makes things even more difficult. And, up until now, Windows 10 has been balky and strange. So I held off, staying with Windows 7 until the last moment. Well, yesterday was the moment. I really like Windows 7 but am not too enthused by the idea of spending $129 to upgrade to 10 after July 29th. It's always a toss up ... do I stay with what I have and am comfortable with or do I take the plunge and upgrade to the unknown. The real problem is compatibility ... I have tons of software that is really happy with 7 and much of it can't be simply upgraded without some serious expense or other issues (Adobe and the cloud SAAS they've foisted on everyone is one example). But I also don't want the headaches associated with an old, out of date OS either. The only redeeming policy from Microsoft is they made provision for going back to the old OS if I wanted to. That clinched the deal. So yesterday, after an overnight download of the install package, I bit the bullet and installed 10. No big issues with the install and I'm running on it as I type this post. It seems to be OK and all my software, so far, seems to be OK with it. I'll upgrade to the big bug release coming next month and see how everything is working. If there aren't any major issues I'll stay with 10 but still have a separate solid state drive with 7 just in case. This constant churn in technology drives me to distraction. Some of it is OK but the need to always come out with something new is really wearing over time.

Old Woman and the Night Sky

I was in Death Valley twice this trip. In mid-April I was on the salt taking sunsets but the full moon made it impossible to get any reasonable star photos so I went down toward LA for a few weeks and came back in early May. I spent a night on the salt and got some really spectacular Milky Way shots (including a long sequence of 268 images for an eventual time lapse clip).

There's a problem however. 268 shots of the salt are really boring. They had serious floods in Death Valley last fall and the old, interesting salt formations were all washed away. What's there now is really new and really white but there aren't any really fascinating shapes yet. Those will come over time if more flooding isn't in the works. And, to be really honest, a really nice time lapse of the Milky Way doesn't impress anyone anymore. What's needed (and demanded) is an interesting composition of the stars and a really impressive foreground structure. That's a wonderful idea, of course, but out on the salt there really aren't any cool foreground structures at the moment with the new, monotonous (did I say white ... really white) salt stretching out as far as the eye can see. So, enter the old woman.

If you head up the road from Badwater (and the salt) to Furnace Creek and keep going for a few more miles up 190 toward Stovepipe Wells you'll get to Mesquite Flat sand dunes. When you hit the parking lot you'll notice a small stand of dead trees, preserved by the extremely dry air and in amazing shape. One of those trees, the one most to the west, is the most interesting. Stand to the east and look at the tree and you'll see an old woman, her arms held out as if welcoming you to her embrace. She's truly a wonderful sight. I studied that tree for a long time, trying to find a way of incorporating it into a Milky Way sequence but I just couldn't see any angle that worked. First, to see the old woman you have to be facing west and everyone knows the Milky Way only shows due south so that's not going to work. On top of that, Tucki Mountain is due south of the dunes, cutting off any view of the rising galaxy. So I thought about all this for a while and realized that the only way I'd get the old woman and the Milky Way was to take shots of each one separately and then combine them in Photoshop. It took 3 days to make that happen. Mostly it was the building of the mask ... the black and white image that separates the tree from the background ... that took all the time. I had to break the process up into 8 separate areas because the bright background is too much like the tree to get a really strong contrast. The only way to get what I wanted was to work in individual areas and play with the contrast until I got enough separation to pick out the tree from the bright sky. There was a great deal of repair work even with all this isolation so it took 3 days to get everything right. But WOW, the result is really nice, don't you think? So I give you the old woman and the night sky. Isn't she spectacular?

Old Woman and the Night Sky - composite image, license CC BY-NC 4.0

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

Death Valley Sunrise

Urban Encroachment...

I drove down I5 in California's central valley, hitting all the major national parks as I went south. At Fresno, I turned east on rt. 180 and drove into the Sierra Nevada mountains, heading for King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. I was lucky as it was Monday when I arrived and the the campgrounds near the entrance were not completely full. I picked a site high up in the far reaches of the campground, expecting it to be dark as I wanted to play with star photography. Imagine my surprise when, upon returning late from my evening's photo expedition, I was greeted by an overwhelming light display from the central valley bathing my campsite. So much for taking star time lapse. I might as well have been in LA for all the light pollution. It's becoming a big issue for all the national parks I understand. Very few qualify as good places to do astro photography. Only Death Valley had the required certifications. Maybe light pollution isn't a big thing for most of you but it's a huge issue for photographers. Our time is an hour before sundown until an hour after sunrise and anything that disturbs those hours in a major issue.

Death Valley Sunrise

Death Valley can be brutal ... especially in the summer. Near Furnace Creek temperatures are routinely measures in the 120s and 130s. Not a place where any sane person wants to be wandering in the heat of the day. My plan was to leave the rest area on state route 395 around 1:30 in the morning and make the drive over the mountains so as to arrive well before sunrise. I had wanted to photograph a sunrise over the salt flats and I needed to find out where the best spots were in time to get there. That was the plan but it didn't come out exactly as I wanted. I arrived in Furnace Creek just after 4 where I met a group of commercial photographers who were shooting at the sand dunes in the early morning light. A friendly ranger who was escorting them suggested I head south and take the west road to a field he considered pristine. Nice idea but I had two problems ... the sun was already warming the horizon and this spot was a good hour from where I wanted to be and on a dirt road to boot. Scrap plan A. The other big issue was the heat ... it was only 4:30 and the thermometer at the visitor's center read a depressing 95 degrees. The forecast didn't add to my confidence ... 127 by 2 pm. A guy could die in heat like that. So I switched to plan B ... scout the valley, looking for good places to shoot and come back in the winter when it was much cooler and clouds actually formed over the valley and surrounding mountains. So, at 5 am I started driving south along rt. 190, stopping at attractive places and making notes. There's a lot of interesting real estate in the valley but you need to find it ... like diamonds in the rough. I was watching the shadows creep across the valley when I came on a sign ... painter's pallet ... and decided that maybe I could find something interesting there. I drove up this winding road, drawing nearer and nearer to the mountains which were the main attraction. Colors like you wouldn't believe ... whole mountains painted as if by a small child with an errant paint brush. Wild, exuberant colors. So I parked the truck and started walking up a nearby hill to get the proper vantage point. It took forever ... the little hill turned out to be rather larger than I first imagined but finally I found my spot. I took several panoramas as the sun came up and this is the best of the lot. It's been pushed quite a bit as the sun in Death Valley is very intense even before it comes up. But I think the colors are as I remember them ... it was an amazing display for sure.

Death Valley Sunrise - 35mm(1.6 crop),f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0