Long Exposure

While not climbing related I thought I would share a recent photo adventure Lib and I took to experiment with some long exposure shots of the night sky and the mountains.

We drove out to the turn for Calico Basin and stopped off at the side of the road just as the stars became visible. To our backs the light from the city, in front of us a pitch black horizon line merged with the sky.

I set up my camera and took a few minutes of test shots before clicking off a 10 minutes exposure. As dark as it was I found it hard to set my focus and harder still to find the framing I was looking for.

An earlier test shot. Taken facing the city, the beam of light from the Luxor can be seen plainly even in a 1 minute exposure.

Before packing up I decided to try one more long exposure shot facing Red Rocks. For those interested in the technical aspects I used a 50mm lens, ISO 100,  f/4 and a shutter speed of ~20 minutes, or as my camera measured it 1149 seconds. I manually set my focus ring just before infinity. Here is the result.

I was surprised to see how much the stars (world) moves in just 20 minutes. I'm looking forward to getting out and experimenting with some other techniques and exposures soon.

I also have a 16x7 crop of the above image that I'll likely make a few prints of in the future. If anyone reading is interested or knows someone that might be shoot me a message below or here.

16x7 crop of the above image. Prints available upon request!

Hope everyone out there is enjoying the season so far. See ya out there!

-BLOCHEAD