CRDESIGNLAB

This picture is quite mind-boggling, if you think about it. The light that struck the image sensor of the 5D Mark II and created this beautiful stellar photo was forged in the center of a nuclear fusion reaction over 75,000 years ago. What you are looking at is the Milky Way Galaxy; our celestial neighborhood.

My quest for a picture of the Milky Way started a long time ago and was one of the reasons I took up photography in the first place. I first mentioned this goal here, way back in January, and have been striving to reach it ever since.

A little over a month ago, I went on a camping trip with my Dad and cousin Alex to Mount San Gorgonio, the tallest mountain in Southern California. I had three goals: have fun, climb the mountain, and take the picture featured above. For once, I accomplished all my objectives. I had loads of fun. The three of us walked 22.8 miles carrying a total of 125 pounds of supplies for two days until we reached the peak, at 11,503 feet in elevation. And I got my picture (well three actually).

So how did I do it? Well, it involved a lot of trial and error but in the end I found a recipe that consistently produced good results for my elevation (we camped at 10,000 feet) and time of night (9:30pm): 30 seconds at f/1.8 and 28mm with the focus turned almost all the way to far away. In my efforts to slim down the amount of gear I would have to carry up the mountain, I elected not to bring a tripod and instead settled for the gorillapod. Unfortunately, because I was not about of crawl around on the bug-infested ground, the height of the gorillapod meant that I was unable to frame my shot or focus the camera. I was left to trying different angles and focus measures at random until something worked. But in the end I achieved success.

But why did you have to go to the mountains in order to get a good picture of the night sky? Well, the answer is something called light pollution. The light from cities and houses blocks out the light from stars, so in order to get a detailed night photo, one must either go to the middle of nowhere (like the desert or forest) or go up (like the mountains). Being so high in elevation meant that I was far enough away from civilization so as to not be shrouded in light pollution. I took this picture at around 9:30pm, just after the sun went down, so I can’t help but wonder what it would have looked like if I had had the energy to stay up even later, thus allowing more stars to appear in the night sky.

When it came to post-production, I sort of hit a wall. I got a good result that was astronomically correct (as far as color) but was not satisfied. So, I asked Steven Moyer for help. I sent him the file for the image above and he managed to help me overcome my problems. The trick (what I had failed to do) was to raise both the Fill Light and Blacks but lower the temperature significantly. The result was a photo that was less color-correct but looked better overall. I spent an hour or two making minor adjustments and color tweaks before reaching a truly wonderful result. I implemented the same tactic in the next two photos, and they turned out quite nicely. One problem that I never overcame was the challenge of finding a balance between noise reduction and sharpening so as to retain detail but minimize noise.

So, there are at least three lessons to be learned from my experience with this photo. The first is that you need to experiment. I tried dozens of different settings and camera positions before I found what was just right and I did not let the lack of a suitable tripod get in my way. The second lesson is that if you take the time to give something a little extra effort, you will most likely be happy with the results. When nightfall came, I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. I was sore and wanted to get in as much rest as I could before getting up early the next morning. Even though I had been planning for months to take pictures of the sky that night, I wanted so desperately just to sleep. But in the end, I muscled up enough willpower to go out into the freezing night and give it a try. I overcame my reluctance, knowing that if I did not just try, I would regret it. And well, the results speak for themselves. The third lesson (that I can think of right now) is that it is okay to ask for help. I knew that my picture had more potential that I was capable of extracting in Camera Raw, so I asked Steven for help and he gladly assisted me in making that picture everything it was meant to be. So thank you Steven.

And here are the other two photos.

Although not as impressive as the first three, I decided that nine other pictures from that camping trip are worth displaying. The truth is that there are dozens more of superb quality, but I just don’t have time to edit them all.

I especially like the next picture, because the mountain you see is Mount San Jacinto, which my Dad and I climbed last year (on the day before school started). It is about 500 feet shorter than San Gorgonio and can be done in a single day, whereas Gorgonio is a two day hike. The valley between San Jacinto and me is the San Gorgonio Pass, which is the primary route from San Diego to Palm Springs. In order to train for our next climb, Mount Shasta, my Dad and I are going to return to San Jacinto and climb the Snow Creek Trail, a grueling ascent from the backyard of Palm Springs straight up over 10,000 feet in the single greatest elevation change in the continental United States. Extreme temperatures mean it can only be done in winter, and even then the ascent is quite deadly. That should be fun.

One thing that I would like to add is that this time, I took extra care to frame my pictures correctly and therefore eliminated a lot of cropping. I highly suggest taking an extra ten seconds to make sure that the frame is good before taking a picture and hopefully you too will find that your images have a little extra beauty.

Well, that’s it for now. It’s been quite a while since my last post, but now I am back in full force and ready for whatever challenges the Mac Lab can throw at me.