20100217-goose-01-edit

comments welcome

What an original take on this location. Excellent execution of an idea. I have some questions regarding the composition of the lower third, but no mind, well done, well presented.

Amazing image. Very well executed and very original. Well done. Cheers

Truly amazing! Dude, you made my day...

Great Capture Whit. Love the long exposure.

That's great. I don't think I've ever seen a night shot of Gooseneck. Excellent idea. I agree with Craig though. Did you take any from a lower vantage point? I know it's not the easiest place to negotiate, especially at night.

Very special, 7/7 anon.

Sperb shot. Heartiest congratulations!

Outstanding.How in Beeeep did you manage this.Great work

An excellent star trail landscape. How did you manage noise with the long exposure (several hours, I suppose) ? Or is the 5D mark II sensor so noise-free ?

excellent

Great shot. World class place, and star trails add wonderful curved to the goosenecks. Enjoyable!

 

+Lalit

Excellent.

Love this shot, makes me want to visit for a week +. For mine i like the bottom third, adds to the affect of where you are & what your seeing. Cheers Kev

I don't particularly like the lower third, I would have liked to scrambled down lower, but I got there in the dark with no moon so it was really hard to see what was in the composition. Had I got there sooner I might have been able to scramble around to find a better spot that showed more of the river, but this vantage point had the advantage of being 30 feet from my van which I was sleeping in. I used a Singh-Ray Daryl Benson ND three stop reverse grad. Although this image looks fine on the screen, there is way too much noise (in the form of little colored dots) for commercial or fine art use. In camera noise reduction was off, so I'm curious if having this on full strength would have helped much with these little dots. Problem is, with this noise reduction on, it takes a long time to process the photos (just as long as the exposure was), too long to make really long exposures and still have enough battery for the processing time. This is about a 5 hr exposure, f/4 I think, iso of 200. I had it set for an 8 hour exposure but the battery ran out at around 5. But with a higher iso and at 2.8 I could have gotten the same effect with maybe a 2 hr exposure? since that is all that is showing of the star path. I would be curious to here about other's experience shooting long exposures and if they are able to somehow eliminate the colored dots. The lights on the horizon are from far off little towns I believe.

Whit, I believe that the only solution to avoiding noise in this long exposures is using film. Noise does not build up as with a digital sensor. Medium format film cameras and lenses are quite affordable these days. For this type of work, get one that does not need a battery or it has battery consumption minimized during long exposures, such as the Pentax 67II. Add a wide angle lens for optimal DOF if having something in foreground to complement the star trails. I have some experience with night photography on film, but will give you a link to this image taken by Eric Yin with a Pentax 67II that also stayed on the top of TRP for some time or this one by Bobby Douglas.

This looks very nice indeed Whit. I know you say you dont like the foreground but to me it looks spot on, plenty of sharp detail. The star trails look great.

 

Gary.

I love the story behind the picture. 5 hours is an incredibly long exposure. 8 hours might have put the sunset in your compo :) I think you might get less noise by using a higher ISO and a shorter exposure time. Fuji is coming up with a camera that takes multiple very high ISO frames and combine them as a in a panorama but with a single shot into a picture without the noise (supposedly) . Nikon and Canon came up with their 100000 + iso cameras but the prices are ridiculous (D3 and 1D Mark IV I think) With that you could probably take the shot in a couple minutes albeit without the star sweeping motion which does add a lot. However, since the horizon is almost flat. Making a composite of the sky on a long exposure with a short one covering the ground might be feasible...the two are disparate enough that we would probably not notice. Overall...it's pretty otherwordly. My only wish would be to have better colors on the ground (late in evening shot combined with the long night sky?)

Quite honestly, this is just great, and even though I agree with your assessment on the lower third of your picture, the result as it’s shown here, is fantastic. Congratulations on a bold and very appealing landscape!

I’m sure overtime you’ll overcome those obstacles that you’ve mentioned, and get the result you’re looking for.

 

Great idea, great location!