"Zion" | This is Zion's entire main valley (about 190 degrees of it) with the Milky Way stretching across the sky...
Zion
(CLICK FOR BIG!)
This panorama took FOREVER to create. I'd estimate that it took about 8 or 9 hours. The full image consists of over 24 photos of the area and there are two separate panoramas put together for this image, one of the foreground and one of the Milky Way. After planning everything out with PhotoPills I knew I'd need to start shooting basically right before the end of blue hour (being in a valley, each exposure was going to take many minutes to gather enough light at lower ISO).
It took me about 4 hours of shooting to completely cover the area I needed for the foreground. I learned as I went that it took a car about 10 minutes to drive from the far right side of this image to the far left and that I wanted to capture what felt like a steady, single line of light through the foreground. In actuality I timed each 4-ish minute exposure with a different car at a different position and planned to bring it all together in post. The logistics of this almost saw me quit the project more than once. Imagine waiting for a car for an unknowable amount of time, it starts its move up the frame, then as you start the exposure the cars stops and turns around, the headlights at one point shining into nearby trees and up AT the camera location at a point, creating an unusable frame. Anyway, eventually I captured all of the foreground with several re-checks (me flipping through the captured exposures and trying my best to mentally stitch them all together in my mind) and I was able to finally settle in and wait for the Milky Way to rise high enough to get above the massive mountains that create Zion's valley. I ended up waiting most of the night, sitting there, trying to lay on the hill in a way to catch a few z's. Failing that, I spend time picking cactus out of my socks.
After many hours the Milky Way's span was high enough in the sky and I was able to capture the panorama. I took special note of various other things; the general 'blueness' of the atmospheric perspective and foreground lit only by starlight being chief in the fore of my mind as I packed up.
I hope you like this!! If you do, toss it an upvote, if you'd like to see my stuff in your feed daily, feel free to follow me! I promise you high quality photography, videos and learning. As always, if you have any questions about how I do this stuff feel free to ask in the comments and I will respond. Thanks!
Photo Details:
Camera: Nikon D810
Lens: Nikon AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED
14mm/ƒ/2.8/20s/ISO 8000
Gave you my full upvote (for what it is worth) for the incredible effort that you put into this.
Wow thank you!! I really appreciate that.
Alright, well...that's straight up amazing, along with the work behind it. Resteemed!
Thank you @photofeed! Much appreciated.
This is incredible!
I hope @photofeed sees this but this is a huge effort for an amazing compilation. Well done!
Me too! Thank you!! :)
Oh don't worry, it caught our eyes right when it was posted haha
<3
Congratulations! Hard work paid off!.
Did you also use ISO8000 for the milky way?
Also how to get the color depth from the milky way without burning the stars?.
I've tried it and then when I edit, the stars get just too bright, i can never get those color shades and details on the night sky shots :)
Keep it up!!!
Cheers!
@greencross
Oh yeah, so it was ISO 8000 for the milky way and something like ISO 500 for the foreground. Color depth is sort of several different factors, atmospherics (light pollution, air glow, and the colors of the galaxies and stars themselves). Definitely have to balance the ISO with the shutter speed/aperture. At 14mm you can expose for up to 25 seconds without stars starting to blur, I have found that something a bit shorter than that, like 20 or 15 seconds with a higher ISO seems to bring out the colors possible without the use of something like an elaborate stablization/star tracking system. Then I spend a lot of time in post enhancing the raw image file, usually color is already there those and its more about balancing exposure.
Thanks a lot for the elaborate answer. Definitively I learnt something new!. And thanks for following. I'm following as well. Cheers!!!
WOW! This is gorgeous. The way the cosmos almost mirrors the stream of light & life below is amazing. It reminds me of one of the coolest principles in occultism "As above, So below"
Keep up this wonderful photography, followed & up-voted my friend.
Much appreciated! Yeah I like that composition/style with panoramic Milky Way stuff, its a tricky balance and I do think that the headlights may attract to much of the balance but I did enjoy the overall story of this, humans down here, creating light/energy that mirrors the (much) bigger picture going on outside of our world.
Great shot and great work after the shot ;D
Haha thank you!
Wow this is an epic shot again . Love your milky way work.
Thank you!
I feel your pain! Drivers in National Parks just don't seem to understand what is required of them to make good cartrails. They get almost all the way, then they turn off at the last possible pulloff, or hit their brakes intermittently around a hairpin, or even stop in the middle of the road, just to let the headlights burn into the photo. ;)
But man, this is a stunning shot, and well worth the effort and time and headache; it's a new one on me - haven't seen this angle from Zion before, at least not at night. It's no mean feat to do something different in the heart of this park!
Haha yep, they just don't get it! Thanks Derek, yeah I knew the general area I wanted to be but I didn't have enough foresight to actually find the spot I wanted before the sun went down so I spent a bunch of time falling onto cactuses and slipping on shale with a fading headlamp. Its safe to say I also bled for this photo, lol.
Ouch! Well, there's so much else to do in Zion, who wants to spend a sunset scouting?
Haha yep pretty much. It’s always a fun rush right at sunset too..
Woww, really cool photo!
I am new on Steemit so I'd really love to make some friends here! If you want for us to support each other, please show me some love on my account and I will make sure I keep reading your lovely articles! :)
You have some lovely work man. Masterful post work too. Finally another Nikon shooter... all of my friends shoot canon, ha!
Right?! I still swear by my D810. I use Sony now for all my video work but ideally Nikon could give me a single solution again.. :P Thanks! Also, have we connected on IG? I know I've followed you for a while there but it would be funny if this is where we finally meet up lol.
Rocking a D800 here. Only reason I want to upgrade is for the low light autofocus, not great on this body. I followed you (on instagram) when I saw your photo on here just now, but I'm pretty sure I've seen your work before! This is a pretty interesting platform for guys like us.. I just started here
Most definitely. Yeah, I ultimately have found that for my astro stuff the D810 can't really autofocus unless there is something like the moon hanging around that I can focus on, but there was a marked improvement for me in overall image sharpness with the D810 over my old D800 so I'm still very happy with it.