Clouds part as they cross the Golden Gate, providing a silver lining to the spate of storms that have run across Northern California in the last week.
This is an HDR image made using three frames, bracketed +-2 EV, and composited in Photomatix.
Muir Woods on a foggy morning in January, 2010.
When the Northridge earthquake cut power in Los Angeles in 1994, Angelenos were stunned to see the night sky without any light pollution. Alarmed callers to 911 wondered if the cloud in the sky had caused the earthquake. For weeks, many refused to believe that the sight of the Orion nebula in the sky was the actual night view without electric lights drowning out the view.
On a recent ski trip to Kirkwood ski resort in the Sierra mountains of California, I made photos on two clear nights from Highway 88. This one shows the Milky Way, among other features. If you click through to Flickr, and view a larger version of the image you’ll note there is at least one additional galaxy clearly visible in the upper left.
I was deeply, deeply moved by the sight of thousands of visible stars in the sky. For me their sight snapped into perspective my place in the universe. It was simply amazing to feel connected to such a vast realm. I found it hard to comprehend the vastness on its own. Framing it with familiar trees helped ground me from the sensation of flying free in space. And time.
I highly recommend night sky awareness to all city-folk. Next time you’re speeding down a lonely highway on a clear dark night, pull over and shut off all of the car’s lights. Step outside and let your night vision acclimate and let the wondrous sights unfold. It’s worth it.
San Francisco Area Time Lapse - Draft - No Transitions or Music from Stephen Lefkovits on Vimeo.
Sunset behind the Golden Gate Bridge, snow on Mount Diablo, morning at Stinson Beach, the clearing of a storm from the Berkeley Hills, heavy fog in San Francisco Bay and the night stars in Tilden Park all seen in time lapse in this rough cut assembled with no transitions or music. Edited version to follow.
Stacked composite of 87 10-second images at f/2.8 at ISO 2000. Stars visible from Palm Springs, November 24, 2009. Angled trails are probably aircraft, though when rendered to video these frames shows that they are all moving from right to left (downward), which may open the possibility that some are meteors.
This turned out to be a classic case of beginner’s luck. This was shot on Tram Drive at about 1500 feet of elevation so there was little ambient light from the town below. Relatively few airplane streaks for a spot so near a major airport, and there was almost no wind to trouble the alignment. I wasn’t so lucky on my second try….
A composite image of a hunting coyote and the full moon – made at Curry Point in Mt. Diablo State Park, Danville, California. November 1, 2009
Bull elk on a ridge in Lamar Valley at sunset. Yellowstone National Park, October 2009.
The edge of the falls, revealed by slow motion. Firehole River Falls, Yellowstone National Park, October 2009.
No, not the Helix Nebula made famous by the Hubble Telescope. Grand Prismatic Spring is one of the three largest hot springs in the world, and the star attraction in Midway Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park, October 2009.
On the evening of September 15, 2009 Marcus and I made a quick run to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay for a good vantage point from which to try out a little time-lapse photography. Using an intervalometer, we fired about 140 frames in 2.5 minutes.
The sun, the orange glow and the Golden Gate Bridge all cooperated famously for this one. The frames were stacked in Photoshow Producer and the timeline was compressed down to 8 seconds. There’s a little jump in the middle where I stopped the sequence to change from JPEG to RAW. It was an unnecessary move. Next time I’ll just shoot JPEG images the whole way through.
