A Tower of Milk

[JimFox]

A few weeks ago I went up to the Devil's Tower to capture Perseids Meteor shower and also the Milky Way. I took my oldest Granddaughter along who is 9 for the quick overnighter. It was a lot of fun and she had a blast. She only has a P&S so she couldn't capture the stars, but she had fun photographing it as we hiked around the tower the next morning. And she totally enjoyed staying up late and watching all of the falling stars.

Anyway, so this is Devil's Tower in Wyoming. There are no meteor's in this one, but I had some light clouds floating through from time to time, so I liked how the light clouds looked in this one best. This was shortly after sunset, maybe an hour at most. The sky was still really blue and by eye I could make out the Milky Way, but not really defined super well yet.

This is a single shot, f2 at ISO 3200 and 25 sec exposure.

The blue star or object in the upper part of the photo I am not sure what it is. Within about 15 to 20 mins it was no longer glowing blue like it is here. Maybe someone knows what it was?

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

Can't help you with the star but I do like what you managed to do with this shot - looks really nice. The blue star is kind of a nice addition.

 

[Jim Dockery]

The stars and tower look great, no help from me on blue star. I do want a bit more earth across the bottom to anchor me.

 

[JimFox]

Can't help you with the star but I do like what you managed to do with this shot - looks really nice. The blue star is kind of a nice addition.

Thanks Alan!

 

[JimFox]

The stars and tower look great, no help from me on blue star. I do want a bit more earth across the bottom to anchor me.

I appreciate that Jim. I have other photos showing the bottom. I had mixed feelings with there not being a ground layer that ran across the bottom, because I typically don’t want a subject like the tower to appear like it’s floating and not anchored. But I liked how it made the tower be so towering. Most of my images captured that night did have the anchoring ground, I will work on one of those soon.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Nice one Jim, how did you get light on the tower? Was it from the not yet dark sky? I had that effect once.

 

[JimFox]

Nice one Jim, how did you get light on the tower? Was it from the not yet dark sky? I had that effect once.

Thanks Ben, this was shot very early in the night so the ground layer was receiving some light I think from the not so dark sky. Also, Nikon has the best shadow recovery of any camera out there I believe, Sony now comes in at a close 2nd. So that helps a lot when you can use the Shadow Recovery tool to help recover light on the ground. That's where your camera's are falling short currently.

 

[Amy Nelson]

Wonderful shot Jim! I wish there was just a little more of the base of Devil's Tower, at the crop point it just leaves wanting more. But what a magnificent job on the Milky Way.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice one Jim. I like the position of MW relative to the tower.

 

[JimFox]

Wonderful shot Jim! I wish there was just a little more of the base of Devil's Tower, at the crop point it just leaves wanting more. But what a magnificent job on the Milky Way.

Thanks Amy. I won’t mention that I cropped off half of the rock base... but this composition as shot didn’t include any of the ground layer on the right anyway. My feeling was the area below the tower, took away from the tower, so that’s why I chose to crop it off up to where I did. I will process some later that show more of the base and foundation, but the tower recedes in those because it is now smaller. My point in this one was to have the tower be the focus.

 

[JimFox]

Nice one Jim. I like the position of MW relative to the tower.

Thanks Jameel. What’s funny with this, is this isn’t the core of the Milky Way, this is the tail. Which typically the tail fades off with much less detail in it compared to the core. But it’s so dark out there that even the tail of the MW jumps out at you.