Bubble Wrap and Nutella: One all nighter on KC...

6/9/11

One all nighter on KC...

For a while now I've been thinking of taking a certain photo. Luckily, last Friday the perfect night for such a photo arose - clear skies with no moon. I took full advantage of this and headed up KC (little hill that overlooks Rossland) around 11pm with a backpack full of camera gear, my hammock, some layers of clothing, and a book. I got up top and immediately noticed the little wispy clouds moving in... not good. Sure enough, about 20mins after setting up for the picture I wanted there were full blown clouds blocking out the stars. Soooo I set up for a little bit of a different picture of my hammock and snapped this unit.

Fairly mediocre shot as I put about zero thought into it, but I dig the colours and the glowing hammock was what I've had in mind for a while.

As soon as I shot this one, I looked behind me to see some quick moving clouds reveal the bright stars! So I set up for my first shot once more and did some tests, one of which I messed up my timing and got this shot of me walking towards the camera with my headlamp on while the shutter was open.

Pretty cool. I eventually got it all dialed (or so I thought) and left it to take 5 minute exposures every 5 minutes to overlap on top of each other to show the movement of the stars (or rather the movement of the earth). I went to read/sleep in my hammock for an hour or so until the sky started to brighten. Once it became light out and I looked at some of the exposures I realized that I didn't focus properly on my hammock and the two trees! Since my tripod was as low as it could go to reduce vibration from the wind and rigs, I had to lay down to look through the view finder while shining my flashlight on the tree to focus at the same time. Sounds simple, but it sure isn't for a rookie me evidently haha. Nevertheless this was my finished product.

As you can see it's out of focus, but I'm stoked on the stars and I can't wait to take some more star trail shots.

I proceeded to begin take a time lapse of the sunrise which completely failed because me, being the rookie I am forgot to focus once again. Oh well. I still took this picture once I realized the time lapse was a no go.