Night at Big Sur – When Life Takes Detours

I spent a few days in September of 2014 to photograph the Big Sur region of California’s central coast.  A small waterfall called McWay Falls at beach attracted my attention.  I decided to stay with it to shot the sunset.  Big Sur, however, is known for its constantly cloudy, foggy weather.  The evening hour around sunset was predictably cloudy.  The sunset was disappointing.  But I still stayed a couple of hours after sunset, hoping the cloud would clear up so I can take some night shots.  The magic did not happen.  So I left scene to drive back to my hotel in Monterey Bay.While I was driving on the twisting mountain road, all the sudden I felt that there were some stars visible in the sky.  I pulled over.  To my delight, the sky was clearing up.  I went back to my hotel, slept two hours, got up and drove an hour in the dark back to the waterfall.  Now the sky was totally clear.  It was so clear that I can see Milky Way with my naked eyes.  I knew this was my lucky day.

 I spent so much time there the previous day.  So the composition was straightforward even in the complete darkness.  I took two shots, one for the sky and one for the foreground.  I tilted camera upward slightly for the sky shot to include more sky while tilting it down for foreground shot, with the intention to stitch them together for a 1:1 aspect ratio.  After taken the shots, I realized that foreground was too dark.  So I left the camera on the tripod untouched, and waited another two hours or so in the dark.  At about one hour before sunrise, it started to have some light in sky and foreground became visible to the eyes.  I took the third shot, just for the foreground.  Back at home, I stitched first two shots together and cropped the image to 1:1 ratio.  Then I aligned the third shot just to blend in the areas I wanted to show more foreground details.

Almost a year later, in July of 2015, I went up to Big Sur again with two friends from California. We checked in at a hotel at south end of Big Sur before we head out to photograph sunset.  Big Sur was cloudy as usual in the evening.  We stayed a couple of hours after sunset to see if the sky will clear up like it did for me a year ago.  This time, I was not so lucky.  We started to drive back to hotel in disappointment.Our fortune got even worse a couple of miles away from the hotel.  A construction crew blocked the Highway 1 to repair the road damaged by a landslide.  No one was allowed to pass between 10:00PM and 7:00AM.  The crew told us to take a detour.  Not just any detour – a three hour detour.  We had to drive north and then head east across the mountains to reach another highway to go south.  It was already midnight.  What choice do we have?  We started our journey onto the mountain road.When we reached the top of mountain, we saw stars! The Milky Way was so clear that I can almost reach out to touch it.  To make things even more interesting, dense low fog rolled in from the ocean, filled up the valley in front of us.

Rivers of Sky

Life is full of detours, we just need to learn to appreciate every moment.

 

Flying under Stars

Flying under Stars

It was so windy at South Coyote Buttes that I could not sleep well the first night we camped out there.  So I got up at 2:00am and crawled out of the tent.  The night in the desert is always colder than what you are prepared for.  I put on all the cloths I can find, still couldn’t stop the constant shivering.  But the cold air will not stop a diehard landscape photographer.  I headed out anyway.  After half an hour of hiking, my body and spirit were finally warmed up to the task ahead of me.

I knew exactly where to go and what to shot in the dark because I did my homework during the day.  I set my tripod down, took a couple of test shots with high iso and quickly determined my composition.  I wanted to include all the foreground elements as well as the clouds and stars.  So I decided to take two shots and stitch them later.  I did not want to see the start trails in picture, so a 30 second exposure is the maximum I can use.   I tilted camera up slightly and took the exposure for the sky.  The second exposure was for the foreground.  I tilted camera downward slightly to include the foreground elements.  For the foreground shot, I was not limited by exposure time.  So I reduced iso to reduce noise and reduced aperture to gain depth of field.

Cathedral Valley – The Sky is My Dream

I dreamed of the sky of my childhood when I slept under the stars and counted through my dreams. For years, I had the same dream, being in a milky and endless universe that I can’t reach the end. That dream has being long gone since I came to the cities of modern world, where we build walls and roofs to limit our vision, where we light up the sky to mask true light.

Here I am. Twenty six miles off road into Castle Valley with my photographer friend Yiming. I saw once again the Milky Way in those dreams.

The Sky is My Dream

Bisti Badlands (3) – The Sky is My Blanket

I have visited Bisti Badlands twice before.  It has been my dream to come back to this magical place again at night.  Here I was in September, with a photography friend, Yiming, from Ohio.

We made a last minute decision to camp in there for two nights.  Now, the problem was that each one of us has some 20 lb of camera gear.  The tent and sleep bags we had are not exactly light weight backpack type.  With food and water, we had to carry another 40 lb of load.  We were not equipped with the hiking gears to carry this load.  Well, nothing stops two PhD’s.  We experimented a couple of options, including getting a cart to roll it in.  The cart idea was proven not very smart, just after 100 feet into the badland.  We finally decided on the hard way, to carry a huge duffel bag by hands together.

Here we were, 3 miles of hiking under the sun, countless rest stops, and tons of sweat later.  We set our tent in the heart of Bisti.  When the night fell, our effort was finally reward.  I am short of words to express my excitement.  The picture carries all my feelings.

The sky is my blanket