Update March 4, 2010: Bit of a hard time getting overly motivated but here are a couple from the all nighter at Murray Hill. Moon lit snow and fog star trails.

Update March 3, 2010: More hoar frosting this morning.

Just driving around in the fog I got an inch of this stuff attached to my car antenna between 4:30 a.m. and after sunrise. I have a stupid amount of photos from the last couple weeks now. No clue how I'll ever get them on here in any account.

Update March 2, 2010: Yay it is March first off. Second, this is short as I was out shooting last night from 10pm to 9am.....yes 11 hours in the cold straight. Chris Allington and I. It was pretty nuts. Slept 3 hours mid-day, bout to try 4 more hours and likely head out again later.

Here is that star trail track from a few mornings ago. I had to leave out some of the end as the steam got too thick.

This was from this morning. The thickest hoar frost I've ever seen, pretty much as thick as the thick rime ice events I've seen this year. Problem was, after being out in the cold shooting since 10pm the night before, there simply was no motivation to document this. It was snap a few and get home to nap for a couple hours. More later.

Update February 25, 2010: It's 8 a.m. and I haven't slept yet. Had one of my best photography nights yet. A good chunk of the coolness will be from time lapse of the river -5F steam, ice chunks, lit by moon. Tyler, Chris and I spent the entire night from 11pm till now chasing that and light pillars. The light pillars were amazingly fickle. Think that is the word I want. Just never very good in one location very long and hell rarely good period. But, got a simply amazing show as the moon set. Area to our west went bonkers with pillars and the moon added to it with its own. Going to be some crazy stuff from this night. Should be able to star trail the TL river scene to something crazy. For now, one of the pillar scenes, bright area is the moon. Briefly tried some frames for HDR, but really, once it went nuts it was more just hurry and get it regularly before it faded. Even tried a TL of this....if only Chris and I had let ours keep going instead of stopping when we did. We knew soon as we stopped, our faded/gone pillars would come back and make us regret stopping it. Sure enough.

That red one ruled and I think must have been from the new Walgreens sign. The night offered a lot more than just that scene. Sort of. Timelapsed, ice chunk, lit by moon, with steam off the river.....has a stupid amount of potential. If only we had more high up plumes instead of fairly steady east breeze. There are a couple moments were the steam tl is just crazy, as the steam does its thing and those lit up ice chunks are zipping by...plus the stars are moving. And the first one is crazy too with a couple blankets going over, then we get swamped. My camera got caked in frost again by the time that swamp hit, so when it left us again, my tl looks the same since my lens was covered. Chris's should be a lot better on that one.

It needs to get cloudy and stay cloudy the next two nights. Time for a break from late or all night COLD star trail type shooting. 3rd night in a row has done me in. That cold gets to you as the night wears on. You can warm up in the car, but each time you get back out later, it takes less and less time to be cold. Soon you are shivering while actually hot in the car. It was odd. Like the core is just sort of frozen. Chapped to hell too.

For the river time lapse/star trails...think of stuff along these lines above. This was the later one closer to sunrise without any moon light.

Update February 23, 2010: LOL the idea actually worked rather well. Got star trails with late twilight sunset colors. Then towards the end I decided to "make a crowd" lol. The problem was when you stack frames in photoshop for these trails you have to select "lighten" to get the stars to shine through. Lighter areas show up over darker ones. Well I decided to make a crowd of people by running around and standing in one spot for 30 seconds or so. Problem then was the brighter snow on all the shots would show up instead of my darker shadow. I figured out how to make them show through. Those aren't all clones, it's actual frames of me standing in all those spots.

All of that was shot tonight from one location. 3/4 full bright moon giving light to snow. Very late twilight colors fading into night star trails. If I want I can leave the crowd I made out as I did those towards the end of the 1.5 hours of 30 second exposures. The only hard part about this, besides freezing in the 5F air with wind on those "people", was changing the setting fast during that late twilight/sunset colors. I'd make a mental note to open up the aperture and then bump ISO up. It's not too tricky once you have it all planned out, but that is the thing....planning. Once it is dark the cable release is locked in and the camera is firing off 30 second, F4, 400 ISO shots in consecutive shooting mode. If I had a brain I'd have looked at the north star. Consider each of those shadows is 30 seconds of facing into probably -10F windchill. Glad Tyler came tonight as it makes it a bit easier doing things at night standing around in moon light. Next thing to add to this idea is a parked car followed by its trail leaving at the end. It is amazing just how bright that snow is on all these shots. It is seriously near blow out white on the LCD with those settings. And it is also crazy how well the stars pop out with the moon up behind me. And the moon was directly overhead, meaning most hazy star conditions. This is the ONLY good thing about arctic air lol.

One problem using the moon to light up the snow is that the moon moves. So things like that barn have their shadows moving. The structure itself gets all blury thanks to that movement of the shadows/light. Star trails straight as an arrow though. Anyway...

Eventually I will post time lapse of all the frames making up all these, including the above one. Think I'll try and concentrate some time on taking more of them(spending hours in the cold at night lol) while we have the snow and while we have the moon. Any clear night this week I almost feel I have to go and try some shots. I only have to drive a couple short miles out of town anyway, so might as well. All it costs is gas idling the car the whole time. I really really wouldn't mind if we at least had lows like in the 20s or to 20. The around 0F stuff just sucks after a while.

Update February 23, 2010: Sigh, might have a new addiction. One I'm not sure I want my 5D II blasting frames away on. Moon-lit star trails with snow on the ground rules. I was out doing this last night from 7pm to 2 am. Chris showed up around 10:30. It was down around 0F but some fog trying to form. I'm not one to baby my equipment I guess, after the LCD scare at 15F the other night. Last night, well, I had a 4.5 hour trail going, then when I went to try and fast change out the battery again, I was like what is all over my strap. Frost! Tripod legs complete frost. Camera, yep. Covered in frost. I'm like, well the lens will be ok. Nope. I had to wait on the 30 second shot being fired off to finish, to check it real quick, as I didn't want to ruin it if it was still ok. The lens was caked with frost. I stop the camera and flip back through images to see how long ago this happened. LONG ago! SIGH! It covered the lens around 2 hours in. It was covered before Chris got there. I sat there and talked with Chris as he got his going too, for 2+ more hours before I saw it was all frosty. Sooooo annoying. It's annoying enough already to sit and wait on star trail photography. More so when the last 2.5 hours are trash. At least the time lapse of that will be interesting. Frost moving around on the lens lol. When I went to move the tripod it was stuck to the ground, in the snow I stuck it in. Seriously stuck! I pulled harder and harder, then Chris began to laugh at how it was actually frozen in place. Finally it gave way. Like someone stuck superglue to the bottom.

The above is that whole first set stacked, frost images and all. Most of the frost ones simply don't show anything but a glaze of ice on my lens. So those trails would be even longer if the thing had not gotten covered. When you stack in photoshop it uses a lighten filter so all that shows is the lighter areas. So the stars pop out.

You'd think someone that just completely encased their new camera in frost would call it a night. Not me. Took a while to warm it up and dry it off. This trail is about an hour I think. Compare it to the first one and you can kind of see there's probably only a bit over 2 hours of trailing on those stars. Arrgghhh I wanted that first one to be a real long trail. It only sucks because I will now have to let it sit there again for 5 hours or whatever. I have to figure out the movement issue too. Over the first 30 minutes or maybe more the camera is slowly moving so the center stars show a hook and the lights on the foreground shot leave a line. Since you are stacking anyway, it is easy enough to use one single frame for the foreground, but still they aren't as light then either and the center stars still show the hook. You stick the tripod there and I think what is happening is it's so damn cold, it is slowly contracting to a position it wants to be when in a very frozen state. Even if this second one had a frozen tripod already. I had one set of legs out too. I think that the issue might be in the joint. If you set it down too "pulled out" on the legs it will slowly adjust itself in the bitter air until it is happy. It is sure a damn long movement, because you only see the effect on things that did not move or barely moved like those center stars. Just slow contraction evidently. I mean consider what must be happening for the tripod to freeze itself rather solidly in this snow. Really wishing I had another camera and lens to do these with instead of the 5D II lol. Just not sure it is worth killing a camera over, at least a sort of expensive one. And the problem is I won't take the caution when I want to shoot something, obviously.

Will probably make an account with more of these and make some timelapse video. They were done at 400 ISO, 30 seconds, F4. So 120 frames/shots an hour. That first one should have 500+ frames to make a TL from and it might be cool as the frost forms. Also on this last one, frost finally formed again about 1 hr in and does so FAST. Like 3 or 4 frames I think it went from clear to covered. I think we need some wind next time to fend off frost. Warmer would be nice too, but doesn't seem that will happen while the moon is still in a good position to do this stuff. Next plan is to do something like the image below here, but keep the shots going so stars trail. You stack it and it should work to show the very late twilight colors while right side stars trail. Moon needs to be to the back/east which is starting to happen next few nights. Then it should look like the below, but add some moon-light on the foreground and stars trailing. Damn the early evening planes though. And anyone that takes this road as their headlights will probably flare my shot. At least in stacking those two things can be worked around mostly.

Update February 21, 2010: Here is one night shot from the cold night out with Chris, Evan and then later Tyler.

It's at F5.6, 50 ISO for 30 seconds. I love there isn't a hint of noise on this at full size. Hard to get that from a 30 second exposure, but 50 ISO and full frame helps. I plan to head back to this barn for some moon-lit scenes. The lack of light over there largely killed it. I should have done star trails like Chris did. Not sure I'll make any account with these as I really didn't take much worth keeping home. Some of the better ones were trashed thank to me bumping the focus ring and not noticing till later on. I had to bump it right after the above as I took closer shots of that scene with the moon still and they are out of focus. Moon is surely in a good phase for moon-lit scenes with star trails, but just have to get rid of clouds. Then go and freeze to death for some shots. I hope it isn't too close to half full already. Anyway, for some better shots of this night go and check out Chris and Evan's images of it here. Especially their second page of images from that outing.

Update January 1, 2010: Happy New Year! Just got the whole Squaw Creek eagle and geese migration image accounts done. They are last 4 in the 2009 image by year section.

Update October 7, 2009: DVD is finally done and available here: http://www.extremeinstability.com/alleychaos.htm

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