Lunar eclipse over the Front Range
Time for another lunar eclipse this morning. A combination of it still being winter in the high mountains, and laziness, meant that unlike last time I stayed close to home. There was a small gathering of onlookers and photographers at the obvious Front Range viewpoint just south of town.
The time lapse version…
It’s possible that I missed the best image. About half an hour before sunrise, the still-eclipsed moon was setting exactly behind the mouth of Eldorado Canyon. A longer lens would have helped here, but I left mine at home!
Les Diablerets
A week in the Swiss Alps village of Les Diablerets lecturing at the Saas-Fee winter school on protoplanetary disks and planet formation. The view from the conference center had a high mountain quality not often seen from inhabited places in the Rockies, and certainly not from locations accessible by train!
This being the Alps, a cable car offers a speedy (if pricey) ascent up to 3000m, all year round! The main attraction is skiing on the glacier – and in summer no doubt great hiking – but the view of the high peaks is itself worth the trip.
Moonrise, Longs Peak
An attempt to catch the first light of the almost-full rising moon on the face of Longs Peak, in Rocky Mountain National Park. A long stack of the stars was disappointing, instead this is 2.5 minutes processed with StarStaX’s “comet” mode. A little of that goes a long way, but I think it sort of works here to enliven what’s otherwise a dull image.
Boulder’s snowiest February
My first attempt at a really long duration time lapse coincided with Boulder experiencing its snowiest February on record (usually, February isn’t a very snowy month in these parts). As is the usual pattern here, the storms were followed by sunny winter days that show off the Flatirons at their best.
A week of Colorado weather
I’ve set up the camera (connected to an external power supply and an interval timer) for a long duration time lapse from my office. Even with a Lenskirt it proved to be tricky to eliminate flare from the glass at night, so I ended up having to place the lens parallel to and flush against the glass. It’s not an ideal framing. Nonetheless the first week saw snow and a couple of good sunrises and sunsets. A major storm is coming this weekend so we’ll see what that looks like!
Teton beavers
An unexpected highlight of last Fall’s trip to the Tetons was the opportunity to photograph a family of beavers. Previously, I’d seen a beaver only once – while rather rudely crossing his dam en route to Snowmass lake in the Maroon-Bells wilderness near Aspen – and had I given it any thought I’d probably have guessed that they were rather elusive and largely nocturnal creatures. So it was quite a surprise to find a pair of Teton beavers active well before sunset, and relaxed with onlookers around. They’re truly amazing animals to see in action!
These beavers are, it turns out, rather famous. Hanging around at the beaver ponds after sunset (waiting to shoot star trails) we were lucky enough to meet Jeff Hogan, a wildlife cameraman whose work for the BBC we knew well. Jeff had been filming beavers at this spot for more than a decade – mostly alone but once with David Attenborough on location. It was a reminder, if any were needed, of how critical it is to really get to know the behavior of the wildlife you’re photographing.
The Tetons from Jackson Lake
I don’t normally recommend staying in the National Park lodges. But Jackson Lake lodge in the Tetons is an exception. Looking through the back catalog of images from the Fall trip the view is really something else!
Zurich
Flying into Zurich at dawn gave an alluring view of the Alps, but this was a work trip and in the course of a week I didn’t make it beyond the city limits (next time, where next is about a month!). The old city center is rather lacking in landmarks, but it’s generally very pretty.
On work trips like this, and even on vacations where photography is not the main goal, I almost always now go with the little Sony and leave the Canon 5D3 home alone. Therein of course lies the possibly existential challenge for Canon and Nikon’s camera divisions – why carry a DSLR, when a lighter mirrorless camera can most often capture a shot of good enough quality?
Part of Canon’s answer became clearer while I was away. They’d like to reset the bar for “good enough” quality into what was formerly medium format territory, and offer high resolution DSLRs to meet that need. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, a side-by-side comparison of 5D3 frames with images from my brother’s Nikon D800e showed the latter to be clearly better, even under normal shooting conditions. So I’ve no doubt that more pixels are useful, and eventually it’s inevitable that full frame cameras will all sport crazy resolutions. On the other, Canon’s specific implementation in the 5Ds feels less than fully compelling. The high resolution comes with an acknowledged step back in video (which I’ve come to enjoy experimenting with), and overall image quality that’s probably a wash with Nikon’s D810 (slightly higher resolution, probably slightly less dynamic range, though we’ll have to see about the latter). Certainly it’s a step forward in the Canon world, but if I’d really really wanted these capabilities I’d have switched to Nikon already.
More interesting, both personally and perhaps for the future of DSLRs, was the announcement of an 11-24mm f/4 lens. If Canon have been conservative on the camera front, they’ve been anything but when it comes to lenses, with a host of unusual recent offerings (a fisheye zoom, new tilt-shift and diffractive optics glass, the 200-400mm f/4 with converter
Dream Lake
With a visitor in town, it was time for a touristy foray to Rocky Mountain National Park, and a quick hike on the popular trail up to Dream Lake. It was a warm sunny day in Boulder, but as usual above 10,000 feet the park provided an authentic taste of winter! Also as usual, I resolved to visit the park more often. Even the most familiar corners rarely disappoint.
