This was taken at Rhyolite on our last night in the Mojave Desert of Death Valley on the photography workshop that @jyokota and I attended this past week. Rhyolite is a ghost town that was a perfect setting for light painting and astrophotography. There was a lot of ambient light from a building in the distance, lighting the exterior. A very quick pan with a light lit the interior enough to give the building more definition. The line is probably a plane but I like to think of it as a shooting star! The shot called out for a six word story.
Sheralee Stoll pointed out that we can see Comet Lovejoy -- very exciting! It's the little green speck toward the top just left of center and it has a tail if you look closely. I didn't know I'd captured it until she pointed it out as I was so focused on getting the lighting right on the building!
@maggiemae You are too kind!! I had two days of practice with a lot of help to get to the point of having the right settings and know what to do in lightroom to adjust for color. That was one of the areas that was a big learning curve for me. I feel confident now, though!
Such a fantastic composition Taffy with the lit up building in the foreground against that breathtaking view of the stars in the night sky. How lucky you were to see this and you put your two days of tuition to get the best result. The course sounds perfect in every way - I have checked out the web site and it looks wonderful. Sounds like you have learnt a lot about Lightroom too which will really set you up from now on!! Fav!
@pamknowler Thanks Pam. The course was very worthwhile...just a note, though -- tuition covered four days, not 2. So we basically did 3 photo shoots on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and two photo shoots on Friday, and one in the morning on Tuesday (the day we left -- we left early so did our own, and I think the group was so tired they chose to skip a shoot and instead do a sharing/critique session). So I feel the cost was really worth it.
Fantastic starry night sky! The workshops must have been so instructive and fun! Your results are amazing! I looked at the link to his website-- I'm really interested in his Zion workshop in Nov!
@redy4et I think you'd enjoy it. He has a good sense of where to take the class members for photographing and is engaging in helping when you are there. He'll give you tips on composition as well. Feel free to email me off line if you'd like more specific information about it -- in gmail, my contact name is teraphael -- just use typical gmail format.
Taffy, isn't that the Comet Lovejoy, the green light right in the middle at the top. You've even got some tail. Did you process out any noise because this looks great. I get so much noise in mine and it's really hard to get rid of. Your camera probably deals with noise better than mine. I also captured Lovejoy a couple of days ago and was rather thrilled about it. Love this shot, that building is so good to shoot the night sky against.
@bella_ss I think it might be, Sheralee!! I'm so excited. I looked at it more closely -- upper left center -- and sure enough, it's green and has a tail. WOW -- what a happy accident!!!
@taffy I'm sure it is Taffy! How about that, you get this totally amazing shot AND you have the comet as well! I also had a happy accident in that I caught a meteor with mine, it's very faint though. http://365project.org/bella_ss/some-more/2015-01-19
wonderful. This picture puts me right back to a three-week visit as a teenager to Bluff, Utah -- way out in canyonland, with yellow ruins and stars. My first impression of the exotic place was of the stars. And the milky-way. Growing up in chicago, I did not know that these things really existed like this in the sky.
@taffy I've always wondered when I have run into photo-workshop people at National Parks or so forth whether it is worth it, but it certainly looks like you two picked a real winner!
@archaeofrog I feel it was totally worth it and it was timely for me. It was helpful to have had 12 photo shoots during the time we were on the trip (sunrise, sunset, night sky each day) and to have had it all arranged for us was so convenient. It also meant not having to think about where to go in certain areas where there were crowds at the 'main' viewing site but our instructors knew of excellent spots just off the common path. And to have someone right there to ask questions about composition or setting made it worthwhile. It's not like you can't do it on your own, but this was certainly an easier way to go about it and more of a guarantee that it would happen (i.e., I know I would have skipped some sunrises on my own, or having done a sunrise and sunset shoot, I don't know that on my own I would have gone out again to do a night sky shot.
Definitely a fav.
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Awesome shot. You and Junko had fun here.
FAV!