The Cosmic Windmill

Gotta use what you're given, I guess.  Light pollution from Greeley, CO joins a gelled Maglite for a little mood lighting.  The Milky Way enters, stage right.  In adverse conditions, you gotta think through problems and be creative with solutions.  This is a great result and will hopefully resonate with a lot of viewers.  However, what I wanted was more simple and plain.  A lot of dreams start as mere suggestions.  So I turned the camera to the East, to find some black sky and used a small flashlight to illuminate the windmill.  This very subtle frame has all the elements necessary to explain why I make images of the natural world.  It's the last photograph I made that night, and with all those possibilities swimming through the sky, it's a great place to stop and get some sleep.  Have a pleasant weekend!

Cauldron

The Little Dipper floats above the glow from Cheyenne, WY.  Light pollution is a fact of life, and because we're all afraid of the dark, it's never going to cease being a problem.  Sometimes, though nature presents itself in harmony with our shortcomings.  Here the Little Dipper teases at the cauldron of city lights, maybe one day it will reach down and scoop the pollution away.

Polaris Encircled

Got it this time.  What you see is the result of 116 minutes broken into 4 minute exposures.  The colours you see in the photo are not typically visible to the naked eye.  Thankfully, however, the camera can see them perfectly!  The warmer the star is the cooler it's colour, so the hotter stars are blue and the cooler stars are red… science is crazy fun sometimes.  Interested in the timelapse?  Well here you go, 6960 seconds compressed to 1!

Faux Nebula

That gaseous nebula in the lower right is actually light pollution from Greely, CO spewing forth into the night  An arm of the Milky Way fights for attention in the background.

Star Week at McF Studios!

A few nights last week, I endured the mosquitos and sleep deprivation that accompany night photography to make a few star photographs.  These were all taken out on the Pawnee national Grasslands in NE Colorado.  You can't really get away from the light pollution of nearby cities, but that's because there's nothing out there to block it.  No trees, no mountains and no buildings.  I love it!  Our rainy season is ending, so everything is green and lush and buzzing with life.  But those photos are going to wait their turn… for now it's the magic of the heavens and it's expanse of possibilities.  This is the first week I've actually scheduled posts, so check back every day for a new photograph.  This first image was a kind of failure.  But it's too cool not to share!  I love the morse code texture that the star trails have, and if you look at the bottom left of center you can see a nearby fence, great scale.  The prairie was absolutely alive that night, insects buzzing in my ear and the biggest loudest chorus of frogs I've ever heard out there.  maybe that's my I like this so much, the memory of sound is connected by the stuttering in the trails.  Anyway, I fixed my settings that caused this and will have a proper trail up later for you purists.  One more thing, that's Jupiter in the lower right and Polaris in the upper left, with a couple of airplanes throughout for good measure.

Happy Shooting!