Work has slowed quite a bit over the past few weeks.  That’s okay though summer is a busy time for everything, I’d love some work but I’m keeping busy just fine.  Promotions really slow down during the summer because it is year end, just gotta wait for the industry to get back online.  For the time being we’ve been doing extras, two weeks ago we went down to the Sand Dunes, what a place to take photos!  I’ve been there a few times before but every time I go I’m a better photographer and see more opportunity.

One photo that I grabbed, right before I broke my remote shutter release cord, is below.  We happened to be down there on a very clear night during the new moon.  The stars were absolutely amazing, Alamosa, CO is right near the dunes but they don’t have much light pollution, this means some wonderful long exposure, night photos can be taken.

About the cord, it was dark, I set my tripod with my camera down for a second with the cord wrapped over my shoulder.  Well, the tripod was not level, I even did a double check!  About 5 seconds after I put it down the whole thing toppled!  Luckily, there was some twine between posts directing people where to go for grounds recover.  The tripod fell right into one of them, it scraped against the ground (the lens hood did) but it did not hit the ground thankfully.  The cord however stayed around my neck and snapped the connector off in the camera.  A pair of tweezers and $30 later I have a new functional cord but man oh man, scary times.

Back to the photo, it seemed appropriate to post the photo because I saw some serious discussion on reddit.com this week about stars photography and I think a lot of people make it much harder than it is.

Milky Way above the mountains in southern Colorado

I took this photo without any fancy star photography equipment in one shot.  No need for star tracking equipment, no need for $100 filters.  What you need is: (more…)