Uploads from Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures, tagged milkyway

Lunar Alpenglow And Milky Way Skies At West Spanish Peak

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:44:23 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

On a night where the primary plan (for great night photography) went to pot, I decided to improvise with a plan to head south to the Spanish Peaks with good friend, Jon Blake.

We were hoping for some more cooperative weather (than was predicted up north) and with a big 84% full moon setting at 3:30 am, I figured we had a chance for a good composite image. I was hoping for some good light from the moon just as it set on the horizon followed by some good dark sky shots of the milky way afterward.

There is a lot more to this post... see the rest and get free wallpaper from
www.coloradocaptures.com/lunar-alpenglow-milky-way-skies-west-spanish-peak

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Big Announcement

I've given my night photography training schedule for the summer a real kick in the pants with some hot new content and exciting locations - hand picked for night photography.
• Learn night photography at Arches, Sand Dunes, and Rocky Mountain National Parks.
• Each workshop is limited to 6 students to ensure plenty of individual interaction.
• Choose either a single-night in-field photography workshop or a multiple night combination with both in-field and classroom night photography training.

Check out the details at www.coloradocaptures.com/night-photography-training/.

Milky Way Suspension At Balanced Rock

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:19:56 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

A creative composition with some good timing places the Milky Way into a position where roles appear reversed. Rather than our planet being suspended within the Milky Way, this image shows the opposite with the distant Milky Way appearing in suspension between foreground features of our planet - a unique perspective that caught my eye from the get-go.

Taken at Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, this image captures the close relationship between our planet and the heavens above. Using long-exposure settings and some gentle light painting, I was able to illuminate world famous Balanced Rock and other structures in combination with the Milky Way skies above - a combination I was thrilled to be able to capture together.

There is a lot more to this post... see the rest and get free wallpaper from
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Milky Way Skies From False Kiva

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:22:54 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

On a recent trip to Canyonlands National Park, something told me to make time for a very special location known as False Kiva. Being a class II archeological site, it has some interesting historical significance and its unique, remote location stood out to me as a worthy target for a night-hike.

So after some research on the location and some patience with the weather, I headed down one afternoon on a scouting mission. I figured if I got familiar with the route during the daylight that I'd have a good chance of finding it under the cover of darkness. And since I had no shortage of places in the area to shoot on a clear night, I figured I'd make the most of the conditions with a follow-up hike down into the false kiva at about 3 am (after scouting at 3 pm) - in an effort to get into position just in time for the milky way.

There is a lot more to this post... see the rest and get free wallpaper from
www.coloradocaptures.com/milky-way-skies-from-false-kiva

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Lost Lake Star Trail Panorama

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:45:41 -0800

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

This image is the result of close to a year of planning, shooting, and then post-processing - a bit of a term project if you will. It's funny that I don't consider myself to be a big fan of post-processing, but at times, I find it adds significant value. In this case, the capability actually provided the inspiration for the capture.

I first got the idea for this after having seen some key post-processing technologies emerge - panoramic stitching, comet-like star trail processing, and star trail extension. On their own, these technologies can be pretty impressive, but I wondered how engaging it could look to capture star trails in an image so wide that it shows curvature of the trails from both poles...

There is a lot more to this post... see the rest and get free wallpaper from:
www.coloradocaptures.com/fine-art-photography-gallery/won...
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Back From The Dead

I know I pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth, but I had my head down on a couple of important projects - and I'm happy to say they're now complete. And now that I'm back, I invite you to join me in celebrating the release of a lot of cool new stuff.

New Website: I had ambitious goals that featured a faster, more flexible, and easier to use store plus a learning center forum. So over the last 9 months, I put in a boatload of hours and worked with consultants in Poland, Belarus, India, the U.K., and the U.S. to get it done. I'll leave it to you to decide if it was a significant improvement (I hope you think so):
• www.coloradocaptures.com
• www.coloradocaptures.com/fine-art-photography-gallery

Product Line Additions: With the new store, we now have several new and unique additions to the product line including Stack-A-Plaque, Aluminum, Acrylic, and Stone.
• www.coloradocaptures.com/print-format-choices/

Learning Center Discussion Forum: It's been a dream of mine to build a discussion community in the Colorado Captures website. I learned along the way that this was a whole lot more challenging than I had realized although I was able to reach all of my goals in the end. Now that it's complete, the topics cover a lot of techniques and suggestions that an aspiring photographer would be interested in. So please help build the community by participating in the forum.
• www.coloradocaptures.com/forum

Photography Workshops in RMNP: After months of preparation, I'm now offering photography workshops in Rocky Mountain National Park. As a compliment to the classroom training and learning center discussion forum, the photography workshops are a natural fit with a choice of either hiking workshop or driving tour.
• www.coloradocaptures.com/instructor-led-training/photogra...

Beyond all these enhancements, I'm also still fine tuning the website to make your experience as good as it can possibly be. And to be honest, I've been looking forward to saying that for a long time now... Thank you for your patience everyone. Be well and stay tuned for more images coming soon!

Milky Way Clouds Over The Mount Evans Observatory

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:10:43 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

Clouds pass quickly overhead revealing the Milky Way skies above. In this image taken from the Mount Evans Observatory (elevation 14,148 feet), city lights from Denver show the reach of their illumination from 50 or so miles away as the observatory and clouds overhead glow brightly without any assistance from light painting. I liked how layer of clouds added some interest as it plays a little hide & seek with the stars above (even if it does add a little noise too).
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Over the past few months, I've taken a good look at opening the door to offering some instructional training on night photography. I've done some research on what it would take to be ready for workshops (which are coming soon) but I've found that the demand for classroom training to even stronger than I had expected. When asked a few months ago, I agreed to do a series of classes for a local photography group and found such a strong response that all the classes filled up and went onto a waiting list within just a few hours of being announced. This image was taken as part of a meetup we sandwiched in between two of the classes. Now that this initial series is complete and I know a little more about the demand, I decided to do a little more.

So I've lined up an all-day training event called "Capturing The Dark Side" - set to take place on Saturday, October 27th in Lone Tree, Colorado. With a whole lot of great content, we cover everything from the planning and the shooting technique to the post-processing. With details at meetu.ps/kt4ZP, last I checked, the class is all fillled up (I'm happy to say).

Beyond the instructional training, I've also been working hard on building a new website to replace what is currently showing at www.coloradocaptures.com. I'm excited and hopeful this will allow Colorado Captures to take a big step forward. For now, it's just my excuse for not posting many images. :-)

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Crestone Needle Nightscape

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 09:28:07 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

After months of planning, I finally made it up to the South Colony Lakes next to rugged fourteeners Crestone Needle and Crestone Mountain. This backpacking trip was fun, but it came with a little sacrifice... 5 miles up through rain and hail (yes, the ground turned white) and my wife waking up to such fierce winds, I thought for a few minutes that I'd see her in our tent rolling across the tundra...

Even still, we saw some incredible sights. At the foot of two of the most rugged mountains in the state, this is a mecca not just for hikers, but for technical climbers. Most everyone we ran into had helmets and ropes which says a lot about the terrain. And since I consider myself a hiker not a climber, I found myself amazed at the terrain these people took on. The point of light near the bottom right corner comes from some climbers getting into position to "scale the needles" between Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle. Needless to say, I was impressed with anyone heading up that route, but at this hour, I was in awe. To put it into perspective, the route down from Crestone Needle is known as the most difficult descent in Colorado.

This panoramic image (coming from 5 vertical captures) was taken from the trail between upper and lower South Colony Lakes near Westcliffe, Colorado. It's a rare opportunity to be so close to so many big, rugged mountains as this location deep in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I timed the hike and capture (3:37 am) so that the thin moon (13% full) coming up beyond the mountain on the left was just high enough to illuminate the mountains on the right below the milky way. Taken with my new D800, I'll admit I was pretty impressed with the low-light details I was able to capture (even out of the moonlight).

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Nighttime Rainbow Over The Rockies

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 22:10:10 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

The summer Milky Way stretches from horizon to horizon over a small alpine pond, the mountains of the Continental Divide, and Denver light pollution. In this scene (I'd planned for months), all the conditions finally came together. This panoramic image was taken from a small pond near Loveland Pass west of Denver, Colorado.

No pesky frozen surface or rude winds to ruin the reflection or a lack of just the right moonlight to illuminate the foreground. Oh yea, can't forget about all that smoke from the forest fires. As luck would have it, when I finally got all the conditions to line up, I was able to do it with my (just arrived) new D800. With 16 images stitched together as one big giant behemoth image, this may not have been the best time to test the new beast, but I didn't mind. :-)

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Hand Painted Mystery Under The Stars

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:31:15 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

Unknown animal tracks combine with lines in the sand to provide a great foreground in this image captured under starry skies. I was hoping to find some great lines leading to the Milky Way and this scene with the animal tracks sure got my interest. The glow you see on the right side is light pollution coming from the little town of Alamosa, Colorado.

I described a few of the techniques I used in taking my last uploaded night scene from Sand Dunes. An interesting one I tried here was an attempt to "hand paint" the foreground. No, I'm not talking about post processing; I'm talking about light painting. When I shot earlier that night, I used my light diffuser to illuminate the foreground with a soft, gentle light. In this case, I was a bit lazy and tried just illuminating the palm of my hand with my little flashlight. Normally, this approach produces a light that's a bit too warm, but in this case, I thought the results looked great!

So there you have it, a hand painted night scape from Sand Dunes National Park, near Alamosa, Colorado.

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Milky Way Gold From Sand Dunes Colorado

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 20:55:21 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

I've been meaning to get back to the Sand Dunes and improve on one of my favorite early night-time captures. Before I really knew much about what I was doing (with night photography), I found myself chasing a vision of the milky way south into the San Luis river valley and finally caught the image shown below. I captured the same golden light pollution glow over the little town of Alamosa, Colorado with the Milky Way above.

Yes, this is a composite image, but I did the work to get it. My wife and I did a scouting trip into the park in the afternoon where I recorded the gps track. Then that night in complete darkness (without even any moonlight), I ventured out following my recorded track. And here, my friends is where this took some real nerve (at least for me).

As I left the parking lot to head out onto the dunes, I entered a zone where the darkness became a bit freaky. I'm used to hiking in the dark, but this was really dark. And I realized that I'm used to having my headlamp light up most everything I need to see - trees up close or forest a little further away. In this case, it was much more wide open with at least a mile of visibility - to those who could see it. I could only see about 100 feet (if that). Add to that the herd of mule deer running around as I left the parking lot and I got a good reminder that I'd entered the domain of the wild.

So thanks to the gps track, I got to explore most everywhere I wanted to get to - while scouting earlier in the day. And I decided that gps track was so important that I don't think I would have been able to reach a spot anywhere near as cool without it. Route finding was still a pretty good challenge because of the limited visibility, but I thought the reward seemed well worth it. I got another shot of Milky Way Gold - only this time it wasn't just close to the dunes, it was from the dunes! :-)

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Colorado Moon To Milk

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Sat, 26 May 2012 18:00:06 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

In what turned out to be my final good image from my recent trip to the San Juans, I caught what looked to me like the perfect moment at twilight. The sun's glow from beyond the horizon was just starting to provide some great light and the moon had lifted up off the horizon providing a fiery glow through the clouds. And on the far right side, I was just early enough to catch the starry skies including the Milky Way before it faded from view.

After driving much of the night trying to find places where my scouted locations weren't covered by thick clouds, I was happy to finally nail this spot with great skies and a terrific calm water reflection! This panoramic composite image was stitched together from 5 overlapping horizontal captures using PTGui. The captures were taken with my Nikon D700 and Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens at Andrews Lake on Molas Pass between Silverton and Durango, Colorado.

Yankee Girl Milk

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:34:50 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

As one of the best looking mines I've found yet in Colorado's backcountry, the Yankee Girl Mine stood out as a spot worth returning to on a recent scouting trip. So with a plan in-mind for some dark night photography, I set out to shoot the Yankee Girl against Milky Way skies. This light painted, stacked, composite image was taken at 4:30 in the morning from a jeep trail off of Red Mountain Pass between Silverton and Ouray, Colorado.

Worth mentioning on the technical side is that I'm really happy with the Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens I've started using. As you can see here, there's very little coma effect on the stars in the corners.

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Background below provided courtesy of wikidot.com.

Yankee Girl Mine has an amazing history. It started in 1882. A prospector named Mr. Robinson was out hunting and found a rock full of galena on Red Mountain. He found where it came from and found a huge chimney of silver ore. He constructed the Yankee Girl Mine. This was the start of the Red Mountain mining boom. Mr. Robinson sold his mine for $125,000 after one month. The mine has a 1,050 foot vertical shaft. The Yankee Girl shaft house above the mine has a bull wheel and wire for getting out ore. You can still see the shaft house today. At its height, the mine produced ten tons of ore each day. Ore wasn’t sorted because everything was valuable. There was no waste! Each day, a mule train of seventy five mules, each carrying 250 pounds of ore, went to Silverton because they had a train and Ouray didn’t. The mine produced silver, copper, and gold. It made $8,000,000 in its time. There were problems too. Everyone knows when you dig down, water fills up the shaft. So they bought a $30,000 pump to keep the water out, but corrosive water eroded the pump in just one month. This bad water was a major problem at the mine. Guston, a town near the Yankee Girl, had a population of 300 people. Guston had the only church in the Red Mountain mining district. There were two other mines nearby, the Guston Robinson and the Genesee Vanderbuilt. While the boom lasted, the Yankee Girl was the center of attention.

Mountain Mining Under Milky Way Skies

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Thu, 24 May 2012 04:20:49 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

"Don't worry honey, it'll be great! I've got a cool place all picked out for us right near the train station. It has an open floorplan with lots of skylights..." I'm not sure if this was a loading station or a case where the cabin jumped into the path of a speeding train, but either way sure shows some interesting history.

This image was taken from the ruins of the Genessee Mine near Red Mountain Pass between Ouray and Silverton, Colorado. I found this location while doing some scouting on a trail off of Red Mountain Pass so I decided to return at night for a capture that included the Milky Way. As it turned out, this composite image used just two captures, both with the same settings. I just used the two to make up for some weak light painting I did in the foreground on each of the single exposures.

Celestial Rotation In The Colorado San Juans

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Sat, 19 May 2012 12:48:59 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

Like the hands of time, celestial objects to the south appear to rotate across the sky - too slow for the unaided eye to see. In this case, the star trails of a long exposure capture contrast with the details of the milky way in a shorter exposure. This composite image was taken from Crystal Lake on Red Mountain Pass between Ouray and Silverton, Colorado.

I haven't done much in the way of star trails in quite awhile but when I saw how the stars reflected above and below Red Mountain with that gentle southern rotation, I knew I was onto something really special. So I figured I'd include some of that rotation as a component of the final image. I hope you like the results!

Starlight Mountain Ski Hill

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:29:59 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

While skiers and snowboarders may have been fast asleep in their nice warm beds, a beautiful celestial light appeared above. In this composite image, the Milky Way appears above one of the highest ski areas in North America - Arapahoe Basin, west of Denver, Colorado.

On this spontaneous early morning drive up the pass, I decided that a few more cool images from Summit County would do well at the Dillon Art Festival this coming June. I got approved to attend as an exhibitor so I thought I'd make sure to be ready with a few more nightscapes from the area.

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Lenticular Mountain Milky Way

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:59:15 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

A vision that finally came true... Milky Way clouds appear above glowing lenticular clouds and rugged peaks in this colorful night-time mountain scene.

This image is the result of a lot of planning to get things just right - factoring in snowpack, moonlight, light pollution, astronomical timing, camera gear, backpacking gear, special use permits, friends who'd even consider joining me for something like this, and (mother nature's trump card) the weather. And with a little flexibility on our timing, I'm happy to say that David Kingham, Dan Ballard, and I enjoyed what we considered to be a great success. It sure helped that luck was on our side with that glowing lenticular cloud!

This composite image was taken after a night-time hike above Loveland Pass west of Denver, Colorado. It features Cupid as the closest mountain (our target), Grays and Torreys Peaks, light pollution coming all the way from Denver (50 or so miles away), and the Milky Way up top. On the tech side, this image comes from one 4 minute long exposure for the foreground and 10 stacked 15 second exposures for the sky.

Capturing Cupid's Milk

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:42:18 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

Photographer David Kingham makes the most of this amazing night-time scene high above Loveland Pass - featuring a view of the Milky Way arcing over Colorado peaks and Denver light pollution. The core of the Milky Way appears to start just above the Arapahoe Basin Ski Area (right side), arcing over Cupid (to be climbed after this capture), Grays and Torreys Peaks and then over the Denver light pollution and finally, David capturing the scene (left side).

In past trips to Cupid, I timed our trek with a thin moon. On this, my 3rd trip to Cupid in 2 years, I decided it'd be pretty cool to time it with a possible view of the Milky Way over the peaks instead. It was a little risky as the darkness of a moonless night can make it tough to see much of anything in the foreground. But I figured that with all the light pollution from Denver and Summit County, just a few clouds would be enough to reflect some light our way. And boy did that turn out to be a good call!

But David and I had an an added bonus in that internationally known travel and landscape photographer Dan Ballard had agreed to join us for the trip. So between the great conversation on the way up and then the incredible view of the Milky Way arcing over the front range light pollution and the illuminated clouds hanging out over Grays & Torreys Peaks, we were pretty excited (as you can probably imagine).

This image was captured at 3:38 am after a night-time trek above timberline to a peak high above Loveland Pass, west of Denver, Colorado. It's an unnamed peak we stopped at (elevation roughly 13,000 feet) on the way to our final destination - Cupid. This panoramic image comes from 11 overlapping exposures stitched together using PTGui. I shot each of the exposures with a Nikon 24mm f/1.4 lens at ISO 1600, f/1.8 for 20 seconds.

This image is best seen LARGE.

Diffused Milk Over The Spanish Peaks

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:13:00 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

There's something really unique about the results of diffused light in front of starry skies - in this case, the Milky Way. I really like the color variation the stars show anyway, but the diffusion I saw coming from a thin layer of clouds seemed to exaggerate the glow from the brighter stars even more.

So I thought I'd give a look at this vertical comp from my last trip down to La Veta and the Spanish Peaks. This composite image was taken in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains west of Walsenburg, Colorado. For most of the night, the clouds were too thick to get much detail in the Milky Way. But just before twilight made the details disappear, the clouds thinned out, revealing the glowing beauty of the Milky Way's center core over West Spanish Peak.

On the technical side, I took two exposures (under moonless skies) using a Nikon 50mm f/1.2 lens. The first was a 4 minute long-exposure at ISO 800, f/2 (I think). Then for the sky, I shot at ISO 3200 for 15 seconds (also at f/2, I think). I say I think on the aperture because the 50mm 1.2 manual focus lens doesn't capture this in the meta-data. I then blended the two exposures in photoshop.

Spanish Peaks Road To A Cloud Veiled Milky Way

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:54:38 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

On a recent night-drive down to Southern Colorado, we were disappointed to find a layer of clouds all but blocking the best part of the view. Fortunately patience paid off just before twilight with this view showing a thin layer of clouds (illuminated from light pollution) in front of some pretty good Milky Way details. This composite image was taken below West Spanish Peak in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of southern Colorado.

It's never too late to improve on a previous post... I liked the details on my last Milky Way shot but it felt a bit over processed. And so this comp came out for a little playing to see if I could get a better, more balanced result.

Fingers In The Fire

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 13:33:52 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

I've had one of these horizon-to-horizon Milky Way captures in-mind for a little while now... just been waiting for the right spot to try it. And while I really went up to Windy Ridge to catch the Perseids Meteor Shower, I ended up liking the results of this effort even more than the couple of meteors I was able to catch.

In this image, the Milky Way stretches behind a scraggly looking tree all the way from one horizon to the other - reaching over to the light pollution and glow from the rising moon to the east. And with the scraggly tree seemly reaching out into the core of the Milky Way, the title you see above came to mind pretty quick.

The composite image you see here comes from 18 individual captures that featured a little light painting at both ends - captured up on Windy Ridge in the Bristlecone Pine area near Alma, Colorado and then stitched together with Microsoft ICE.

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Thatchtop Mountain Milk

nobody@flickr.com (Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:00:20 -0700

Mike Berenson - Colorado Captures posted a photo:

I went up into the park for another night hike with Jon Blake - this time looking for some starry reflections in the melting ponds and lakes. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans and blew a bunch of wind our way. Ugh... Apparently our plans weren't as important as hers!

We had a good time anyway and we did get a pretty cool view from one of the overlooks that included the Milky Way over Thatchtop Mountain. This image was taken from a trail above Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park, Colorado. On this one, I just did a single exposure with no stacking or exposure blending - just a little help from Color Efex Pro 4.