Well, what a great start to our holiday in Colorado!
Two days after arriving, and wide awake at 2.30am due to the seven hour time difference, It was an easy decision to get up and out to photograph the stars.
Liz and I were staying for two weeks in Estes Park, just on the border of the Rocky Mountain National Park and within half an hour's drive of some potentially stunning locations.
To photograph stars sucessfully, apart from having the right equipment, you need the right conditions, that is to say a moonless night, a light pollution free zone and a clear sky.
Low humidity helps a lot too, as camera lenses will fog up once the dewpoint is reached unless you warm them up.
So I reckoned that, 9,000 feet above sea level at Sprague Lake, well inside the borders of the park and just a couple of days from a new moon would do just fine.
And so it proved to be, with the milky way arching dramatically through the sky overhead, passing over some conveniently placed fir trees to give an anchor to the view.
I had hoped for the waters of Sprague Lake to be still, and then I could have had a reflection of the milky way as well, but that was not to be as a breeze sprang up, ruffling the surface of the lake to the point where no reflection was visible, even with a fifteen second exposure.
That same breeze also wafted some light cloud across the scene, but thankfully not so much as to obscure the milky way, and with the clouds picking up a faint light glow from Estes Park I ended up with a nice colour contrast of blue and yellow for some of the video which I think adds some extra interest.
I kept on shooting the stills for this time lapse until the eastern sky grew bright and the stars started to fade from the scene at around 5.45am, then I turned my attention to the west to watch as the rising sun lit the peaks of the Rockies on the other side of the lake - but that's another story.
Filename - rocky mountain stars timelapse_01
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 14mm prime
Exposure (start of sequence)
15 secs @ f2.8, ISO6400
Exposure (end of sequence)
15 secs @ f2.8, ISO6400
Capture interval - 15 secs
Location - Sprague Lake, Rocky Mountains, Colorado, U.S.A.
This clip - HD 720p
Clip duration - 20 seconds
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