Wilderness Images

Here in the Midwest it has been a very hot summer, it is now mid-August and as we round the corner and start to head towards fall, I look forward to things starting to cool down a bit. One of the many reasons that I look forward to the cooler weather this time of year is that cool mornings means dew covered subjects. One of my favorite things to photograph. Dew forms when the temperature gets cool enough to cause the water vapor that is present in the air to condense on different surfaces. Late August through early September happens to be one of the best times of year to get out and find dewy subjects to photograph.

For this type of photography I like to get out in the field about a forty-five minutes before sunrise to try and find a few subjects to work on. Locating subjects is actually the hardest part of this type of photography. But you will find if you are persistent and walk slowly through a meadow you will find things to shoot. Once you find something to shoot the actual photography part is fairly easy, since your subjects are chilled and will be unable to move until they warm up a bit.

For this post I thought I would share with you a different type of photography, star trail photography. This particular image was made in Utah a couple of years ago. It is an eight hour exposure that I made on film (you could do it on digital but you would need to be able to make sure the batteries did not die during the long exposure). The trails are formed as the stars paint light across the image while the shutter is left open. In the photo it appears as if the stars are rotating, in truth the earth is actually spinning beneath the stars. The brightest star near the center of the circles is the north star. The north star makes a very small circle because it is nearly over the North Pole (the axis on which the earth spins). If I were able to make this image in the far north during the period of 24 hour darkness, I could make a 24 hour exposure and the stars would make a complete circle.

The light you see on the rocks comes from a small sliver of moon that was up for a couple of hours during 8 hour the exposure.