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I haven’t posted much for photos the past few days from the Bold Coast because I’ve been working on this spherical panorama of the Milky Way. The bright light in the ocean to the left of the Milky Way is Southwest Head Lighthouse on Grand Manan Island, about 13 miles away. The one to the right is Little River Lighthouse in Cutler, Maine, about 1.25 miles away. The towers right of that are the Navy’s VLF transmitters to communicate to submarines in the Atlantic. Part of the Big Dipper can be seen reflecting in the pool, but it is hard to make out in the sky amongst all the other stars. The green glow on the rocks to the right of the pool is a bioluminescent beetle of some sort. We saw quite a few of them and I’m not sure what their proper name is.
I shot two spheres: one with 30 second exposures for the Milky Way with sharp stars, the other with 241 second exposures for detail in the ground. Each sphere consists of 13 photos. I also shot two dark frames and removed hot pixels via Pixel Fixer instead of using long exposure noise reduction in camera. This way I was able to capture each sphere faster without waiting twice as long. It took about an hour to capture all the photos for both spheres. Masking the two together in Photoshop took a lot of work, especially of the sky through the trees. I discovered it was easier to mask the two exposures together for each frame before stitching with PTGui Pro. This was taken on the second night of my hiking trip with Christopher M Georgia Photography, A G Evans Photography, Jared Blash Photography, and Taylor Photography.
Shooting data: Nikon D700 & 14-24mm f/2.8 @ 14mm, f/2.8, ISO 2500, and 2 exposures of 30 seconds and 241 seconds, 13 positions.
Prints and more available through my galleries.
Night Photos:
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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.
