Earth Day 2016

Sunrise over Buzzards Bay

Today is the celebration of Earth Day; Landscape Photo Magazine had a project to celebrate Earth Day.  The project is for people all around the world to photograph sunrise at their location.  We went to my favorite spot for sunrise, which is Gooseberry Neck in Westport, Massachusetts because it usually has great color in the sky.

Well, today there was some color at the horizon, which was muted due to the clouds and low fog bank at the horizon over Buzzards Bay.  In fact, you barely could see Cuttyhunk.  Despite that the clouds I did produce some images.

Sunrise over Buzzards Bay

Sunrise over Buzzards Bay

Sunrise over Buzzards Bay

For all you photographers try to get out today and capture some photos of our Mother Earth to help honor it.



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Morning Sunrise at Gooseberry

Finally, a morning when we did not have to pick up my son at work.  We will be able to get a sunrise today.  Arriving at Gooseberry neck, Westport, Massachusetts at around 5:20 AM.  The sky was still dark in the waxing gibbous moon was high in the West.  The first pictures that I took were of the waxing gibbous moon.

Waxing Gibbous Moon

 Then turning our attention to the East, looking over Buzzards Bay toward the Cape, the sky was filled with clouds haze and fog to the right.  I utilized my Nikon D 810, Tamron 28-75 on a tripod.  I set my ISO at 200, F-stop at f10, put a two second delay on shutter release and used a wired remote..  Checking a depth of field chart everything was in focus from about 5 feet to infinity.  I then took a series of photographs starting at about 5:35 AM, with Venus still prominent in the sky, and finishing up after the sun had risen.  Timewise halfway before the sun rose.  I created a panorama to show the fog bank, haze and clouds over Buzzards Bay.  The haze and clouds created a bright red sun, rather than a bright yellow sun, as it rose from beneath the horizon.

Nautical Dawn with Venus in the Sky

Civil Dawn

Civil Dawn

Civil Dawn

Panorama Show in the Clouds Haze and the Fog Bank on the Right

Just Prior to Sunrise

Sun Rising

Final Photograph after the Sun Had Risen

I have photographed it both sunrises and sunsets on Gooseberry neck over the years and never or to the same.  For sunrises, you should arrive while it is still dark, and for sunsets be prepared to stay at least a half hour after sunset because you never know when the best colors is going to occur.

Because of the dampness in the ear and the slight fog, prior to putting equipment the way we dried off the tripod legs with the towel and blotted the camera and lens to remove any dampness that may have been on them.

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A Night at Gooseberry

Sunset

Last night, there was a possibility of Aurora, so we went out to Gooseberry in order to watch the skies and photograph whatever we saw.  The sunset had some nice color at the horizon, but there was not any clouds, so we did not get one of those very colorful sunset's.  The moon was in the sky brightly shining in its first quarter view..  This guy slowly darkened, then Venus followed by Jupiter and finally Regulus appeared in the sky.  Jupiter is catching up to Venus and by the beginning of the month should be at their closest conjunction until next year.  It was a beautiful night, with intermittent clouds some breeze, pesky mosquitoes and people out just walking, going fishing or kids celebrating the end, the school going to have a campfire on the beach.  Once the clouds passed the Milky Way was able to be captured by the cameras because of the moon.  It was not as bright in the sky as usual, Cassiopeia W was just above the horizon and in one picture I have some green color, which may have been an Aurora.  We watched a couple of satellites, passing overhead one on a west to east direction and one and a north south direction.  The moon shined rightly on the water and as the evening progressed, the planet slowly sank into the northwest.  It is always great to be out and observe the wonder of the heavens that flow above us, plus capturing a bit of it in our cameras.

Looking south with the stars in the sky, clouds and a fire on the beach

Milky Way panorama

Cassiopeia above, a possible Aurora

moonlight reflection on the water

satellite passing overhead

Venus, Jupiter and Regulus slowly setting in the West

same photo as above, but captioned

By the way, the Fourth of July is coming up and Topaz DeNoise is great for removing noise from high ISO pictures.  In fact I use it all the time on my night photography .  Topaz DeNoise is on sale until July 30 http://www.topazlabs.com/aff/idevaffiliate.php?id=850&url=http://www.topazlabs.com/denoise

Sunrise at Allens Pond

Sunrise Allens Pond Panorama 6:34 AM

This morning I traveled out to Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon sanctuary to capture the sunrise.  I utilized my Nikon D7100 and my Nikon 70-200 on a tripod to capture all the pictures this morning.  I wanted to show that you do not need a wide-angle lens to capture a good landscape and sunrise photograph.  Civil Dawn started at 6:33 AM, and my first panorama of the sky and color taken from Allens Pond and showing Buzzards Bay was at 6:34 AM.  Slowly the sky start to brighten and there was a lot of nice color in the East.  I took the second panorama at 6:54 AM, and they individual photograph at 6:55 AM.  By the time 7:00 AM came almost every bit of the color was gone from the sky and at sunrise, which occurred at 7:03 AM, there was just minimal color and the clouds were thick enough that you could not see the sun.  Eight excellent article about sunrise and sunset phenomena is located at http://www.weatherscapes.com/techniques.php?cat=optics&page=twilight

Sunrise Allens Pond Panorama 6:54 AM

Sunrise Allens Pond 6:55 AM

Sunrise Allens Pond 7:00 AM

Sunrise Allens Pond 7:03 AM

If people arrived just at sunrise.  They would've missed out on all the beautiful colors that occurred prior.  Also for sunset, some of the nicest colors can occur during the last half-hour after sunset.

Antares Rocket Space Space a Big Bang!!

Sunset

After the Antares rocket launch got scrubbed on Monday and was rescheduled for Tuesday, four of us went to Gooseberry hopefully to capture the launch.  We were keeping our fingers crossed, because the sky was mostly cloudy.  We set up on the west side of the island on a high dune which gave us a good view of the sky and the towers.  The sky.  After sunset did have some nice colors.

The sky waiting for the launch

On a cell phone, we connected to the space.com site and watch the live lift off of the rocket.  We then set our cameras up to take interval pictures and did shut off the cell phone.  After the time passed when the rocket should've been able to be seen.  And we did not see it, we quit and left for home.  On the way home on the news I heard the rocket exploded six seconds after launch.  If we kept on watching we would've known what happened.  Oh well, it was a nice night and any time you are out photographing it's better than sitting in front of the television.

Where we hoped to see the rocket flight

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Saturday's Lightning Storm

Saturday, after I arrived home from the White Shark and Whales Trip, I sat down to supper that my grandson and great-granddaughter prepared for me.  After which I had a delicious carrot cake birthday cake.

I went outside to get something that I had left in the car and to my North were clouds with intermittent glow from lightning and some lightning flashes.  I set up my tripod, camera and lens, and since it was dark out, I experimented with various settings and ended up, utilizing an ISO of 400, f-stop of F/5.6 and 10 seconds, which gave me the picture I wanted.  I set my interval timer in the camera for one picture every 11 seconds to make sure that the previous picture would be written to the card.  I started the timer and as the clouds started moving more toward the north east.  I did change the location of the tripod and camera.  I ended up finally move in the camera from the parking lot to my back porch hopefully to catch some more lightning bolts as the storm was moving away.  During this whole time we did not have any rain until the storm moved completely away, then the rains came.

After importing the pictures into Lightroom, I adjusted the color balance then selected a baseline photo and then a number of photos which had lightning bolts in it.  Utilizing the same technique as I did, making firefly composite pictures, I exported the pictures as layers into Photoshop.  Then I auto-aligned the images, made sure the base image was on the bottom, took the rest of the images and change the mode from normal to lighten and created a composite of lightning bolts over my condo complex.

I then took the complete initial set of pictures and made a short video.  I also took all pictures to make a video showing the passage of the storm.

Time Stack at Sunset

Original View

I have done time stacking to produce star trails, but have not use the technique for daytime photography.  I read a tutorial on time stack by Matt Molloy http://500px.com/blog/1051/tutorial-time-stack and decided to try this out myself, since it looked interesting.  My first attempt did not work well because there was not many clouds and they were not moving.  Last evening, there were more clouds in the sky, so I decided I would try again.  First question was where to go?  My grandson, who was coming with me said let's go somewhere different.  I opened up The Photographer's Ephemeris on my computer and looked for an area that would give us a view over water.  I decided on Lake Nippenicket in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.  By the way The Photographer's Ephemeris is it great tool to help you decide on locations and sunrises and sunsets.  It is free to use on your computer and it is also available as a App on android and Apple devices.

After we parked the car in the parking lot took our equipment down to the water.  The view was excellent.  I set up my camera, leveled it, made sure that everything was in focus, took the camera off auto-focus. My settings were in manual mode, low ISO, and set the exposure so that the clouds were not overexposed, since when I stack the pictures, I did not want pure white in the clouds.  Since I use a Nikon camera, which has a built in intervelometer, my settings were to take one picture every five seconds.  If you use a Canon camera, you will have to use and external wired intervelometer.

I took a series of photographs until the sun was behind the low bank of clouds on the horizon.  At that point I stopped the camera, reposition it and took another series of photographs as the sky turned blue and the top of the cloud bank was glowing from the sun.

After downloading the pictures into Lightroom and examining them, because the clouds were slowly, I selected every sixth picture of the first set for a total of 11 and exported them into Photoshop in layers.  My next step was to select all the layers except the bottom one, and change the mode from normal to lighting.  Liking what I saw on my computer screen, I flattened the layers, then duplicated the layer and ran adjustments on that layer, utilizing Camera Raw, Topaz, Clarity and Detail to give me the picture that I wanted.

First picture of the series with no adjustments

Sunset and clouds stacked

For the second set, I selected every other photograph for a total of 10 and then followed the same technique that I did for the first set.

First picture of the series with no adjustments

Sunset and clouds stacked

I like the way the pictures turned out and will continue to experiment more with this technique.

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 I created this limited edition print  8.5 "x 11 " to honor the first year that I was able to photograph the entire family.  Half of the proceeds will be a donation to Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary to help them continue public service. When you order please include your name and mailing address, Thank You.

Limited Edition of 25

numbered and signed

Night Sky at the Stone Barn

Early this morning, there was supposed to be a great meteor shower.  My son and I traveled out to the stone barn in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, hopefully to view the show.  We knew the weather would be against us, since the rain was forecast and cloudy skies.  When we arrived, the skies were cloudy and the clouds were moving.  At one point I was able to visualize the North star for a short period of time.  To the West a portion of the sky opened in the stars were visible for a while.  During that period, we did not see any meteors.  Finally, everything clouded completely over again.  We packed up our cameras and came home.

Even though we did not capture any meteors, it was nice being out Photographing Our Natural World.

Here is a short time lapse of the clouds moving over the Stone Barn.  There are more Celestial events occurring during the year, and hopefully the weather will cooperate better.

Welcome to Spring

Early Morning Color At Gooseberry

Even though no one's signed up for the workshop to celebrate spring, I still went out to Gooseberry to enjoy the sunrise. Not only was it a gorgeous sunrise, prior to the sun rising I was able to get pictures of the waning gibbous moon and then after sunrise the moon with clouds. Initially the sky was clear would only a few clouds but later the sun was hidden behind the clouds which gave some interesting photos.

Sunrise

Sun in the Clouds

Waxing Gibbous Moon

Waxing Gibbous Moon With Clouds

Song sparrows were out and singing, there was still a good number of seabirds and peeps. The snowy owls was still there and even though I did not get any pictures I saw them flying off in the distance.

Song Sparrow Celebrating Spring

After walking the island and looking at the coming signs of spring I then drove over to the Bayside and had one of their great breakfasts.