0 Likes
June 18, 2015, 01:27 – 02:53 AM
I shot this shortly before and during astronomical dawn from the cliffs of Ocean Path along the Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park, Maine. The outcrop into the ocean on the right is Thunder Hole in the foreground with Otter Cliff far off on the horizon directly below the galactic center of the Milky Way. On the left are the cliffs overlooking Sand Beach with Great Head on the horizon beyond, and dawn fast approaching. High tide was at 12:23 AM. A little bit of air glow is visible over the ocean’s haze.
I shot two spheres of two different exposures and blended them in Photoshop, the shorter exposures of the sky first followed by the long exposures of the ground as it got brighter out. All of the photos were aligned in a single PTGui project since there was some discrepancy between the alignment of the two spheres, having shot them on a manual panning head without the accuracy of a robotic panning head or a click-stop rotator, and rushing to beat sunrise! I manually blended and masked all the individual photos and exposures in Photoshop. Each sphere consists of 2 rows of 6 photos, plus an extra shot of us attempting to stand still!
Camera settings: 14mm, f/2.8, ISO 5000, 20 seconds for the sky and 14mm, f/2.8, ISO 5000, 158 seconds for the ground.
Equipment used: Nikon D810, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, Promote Control, and Really Right Stuff TVC-34L tripod w/ leveling base & multi-row panning head. Long exposure noise reduction via Pixel Fixer, RAW conversion via Lightroom, aligned via PTGui, and manually blended via masks in Photoshop. Planned with PhotoPills.
...
The United States is one of the most diverse countries on earth, jam packed full of amazing sights from St. Patrick's cathedral in New York to Mount Hollywood California.The Northeast region is where it all started. Thirteen British colonies fought the American Revolution from here and won their independence in the first successful colonial rebellion in history. Take a look at these rolling hills carpeted with foliage along the Hudson river here, north of New York City.The American south is known for its polite people and slow pace of life. Probably they move slowly because it's so hot. Southerners tend not to trust people from "up north" because they talk too fast. Here's a cemetery in Georgia where you can find graves of soldiers from the Civil War.The West Coast is sort of like another country that exists to make the east coast jealous. California is full of nothing but grizzly old miners digging for gold, a few gangster rappers, and then actors. That is to say, the West Coast functions as the imagination of the US, like a weird little brother who teases everybody then gets famous for making freaky art.The central part of the country is flat farmland all the way over to the Rocky Mountains. Up in the northwest corner you can find creative people in places like Portland and Seattle, along with awesome snowboarding and good beer. Text by Steve Smith.
