Blog v2

“Exploring the Night” is a short film capturing the beautiful dark skies of the California Coast in realtime. A realtime video of the night sky is going to be the upcoming trend with the camera technologies breaking ground in creating some stunning fast wide angle lenses, and reasonably priced mirrorless bodies capable of going up to 400k ISO with reasonable quality.

This is a compilation of realtime video of Milkyway captured to emphasize the beauty of the dark skies in the coastal California from a photographer’s life chasing the Milky Way and how it is important to get them back for our future generation to cherish and enjoy.

It also to showcases the technological advancements with the camera and lenses which has helped me put together this video.

The short film concentrates on audio visual which portrays the night is lively and equally beautiful to witness in realtime moving away from long exposure photography and time-lapse techniques to capture the videos of night sky. This has enabled me to capture some intricate details on the dynamic surfs and some subtle dances of the wildflowers and coastal plants with the breeze. I was lucky to capture a strange light moving across a frame which supposedly could be a lighting bug (fire fly).

This is my first step to much more and much better quality night sky videos with wildlife captured in the dynamic coast of California. This was shot with the combo of Sony’s A7s and the beautiful Sigma 20mm F1.4 lens with a metabones adapter and believe with the coming technological advancements its going to be even more intriguing.

International Dark Sky Week is an annual event which is celebrated to create awareness about conservation of dark skies around the world. With more artificial bright LED lights at night we are slowly starting to lose stars from our lives. As an avid Dark Sky Seeker who was born and brought up in a heavy light polluted city, I was stunned to see billions of stars so bright shining with our Galaxy Milky Way.

Darks skies not just is beautiful to watch with the naked eye but the benefits of it are a lot. With control of light pollution, we can achieve energy conservation, and also saves wild life which are detracted by bright night lights of the cities and towns.

Not just that, but with recent studies, it also shows it affects humans health and we are definitely at a loss but losing the stars from our life.

I would like to showcase thru this photo series some of the dark sky areas in the US which can provide you with a great solitude to enjoy the night with billions of stars and hundred of shooting stars. Hope you like this series and Happy Dark Sky Week. Wish you all clear skies to enjoy the stars and as well as some shooting stars of Lyrids meteor shower.

In my pursuit to visit natural wonderlands of United States of America, I have been fortunate enough to visit 25 National Parks and preserves in the past 10 years and amongst which some of them were multiple visits and some even touching double digits.

As I moved across different states, sometime for jobs I made it a point to visit nearby national parks. Sometimes, some of these parks me go so crazy, I use to fly, drive several hours to reach the location or once I even did a cross country drive from San Francisco to Maine covering multiple National Parks on the way from Yosemite in California to Acadia in Maine.

The night sky was one of the major attraction for me who was born and brought up in a City. I was fascinated by the number of stars that we could see with our naked eye. And as a photographer I got thrilled to capture them as well.

As we are celebrating National Park Services Centennial today on the 25th of August 2016, I wanted to relive my National Park Experience in this presentation of the below National Parks I had visited over the period of 8 years. Here is a collection of Photographs which I have carefully selected from my archives of all the 25 National Parks I have visited and which I feel portrays the National Parks feel to be there and enjoy and cherish it.

As a nature photographer, I take pride in capturing the beauty of varied landscapes in some magical lighting conditions. National Parks provide me the opportunity to enjoy and capture the moment at the same time. Running National Parks is not a simple thing and I believe the National Park Service which does a great job 24×7 365 days deserves an applause in what they do. Starting from providing a conducive environment to the public to visit and enjoy the place, they managing rescue operations day in and out providing safety to public. They conserve nature and wildlife and as well create awareness amongst the visitors on how to conserve and not pollute the preserved parks and its wildlife.

Keep Wildlife Wild and Nature a natural pristine untouched place for the generations to come. I am thanking NPS and hearty wishes to them for achieving this milestone. Happy 100th Birthday National Park Services.

Me and my wife planned a visit for night photography to Big Sur Pacific Coast region which is about a 6 hr drive from our place in Los Angeles. I don’t think we ever missed a chance to enjoy the night sky when we were given the opportunity to do so in our trips. We started driving at 10.30 am and reached Pfeiffer Beach by 4.00 pm. In between we had some astounding views of the pacific coast. The world famous CA1 highway goes along the coast. We stopped for some photographs with the elephant seals up close.

                                                                             Elephant seals resting in the beach

When we reached Pfeiffer Beach, it was one of the windiest beaches I have ever been with monstrous waves crashing on the rocks it intimidates a new person visiting the beach for the first time. We enjoyed watching an amazing sunset at the beach and took some photos standing against  a cold wind blowing from the Pacific Ocean.

Crashing Waves at Pfeiffer beach

                                                                                        Pfeiffer beach Portal

We planned to come back to the beach that night again to admire Pfeiffer’s beauty in moon light. To experience dark sky and also to capture good night photographs of the star with the landscape one should look for the 1/3rd moon phase. This was one such night when we would be able to watch the stars along with the moon illuminated beach and its massive rock formation. We went to the lodge and got ourselves ready and was excited to venture into the beach around 9.40pm to capture the moonlit Pfeiffer. Stunned by its beauty in moonlight, I kept watching the crashing waves creating white surf with the Moon and Venus bright in the western sky.

The light pollution may not look as a big problem from the outside but it has been proved that the excessive light thrown out creates health issues to human beings. Scientific evidence suggests that artificial light at night has negative and deadly effects on many creatures including amphibians, birds, mammals, insects and plants which depend on natural day light and star light for their activities. Here are 5 photographs with 5 different level of light pollution plotted against Milky Way.

Gaining Cosmic Energy –  This is a perspective of gaining the cosmic energy from such a beautiful location Mono Lake with literally no light pollution from surrounding towns and the sky turns up with all the details possible of our Universe!! It was taken with a 50mm lens on a full frame with 15s exposure with ISO 3200 without tracking.

Mono Milky Way – This is again from Mono Lake taken on the same night but after an hour when Milky Way moved south from South East, and this time it is over the lake with lights from the small town of Lee Vining which acts as a distraction along with some very little light coming from far off place which might’ve been created from the wild fire which started on the same night over Yosemite National Park last summer.

Double Arch – Galactic Milky way arched nicely over the Earthly Arch Rock in Joshua Tree National Park during an eventful night when my wife standing inside the Arch saw several meteors striking the earths atmosphere. We listened to Coyotes singing and supposedly Mountain Lion Purrs and Meows!! This panorama shot stitched together with 7 single exposure vertical photographs. The small light domes seen here are an indication that there are some lights far from the place which creates these domes. Larger the dome larger is the light pollution from near by cities.

Blue Ridge Parkway – This was my first milky way shot of the 2015 season!! It was a sad story to start when nothing went right when I wanted to time-lapse  the moon set and milky way rise over the blue ridge Looking Glass Rock, eventually it turned out the roads were closed. Clueless what next, went to looking glass falls to catch the milky way but it turned up it was very hard to control shadows of waterfalls to the light polluted bright sky. Then I had the urge to at least see the milky way with my eyes for all the effort I had taken and wanted to give it a try once again at 5AM and hence drove back all the way again to blue ridge parkway.  There were lights from many small resorts and towers all across the mountain valley on the way up and hence I drove to the top of that intersection where the road was closed, and to my surprise Milky Way was visible against so much of light pollution from near by cities.

Monument Night Sky – Here is an example of how the light pollution and clouds can make the night sky viewing even more worse. Clouds tend to stick on to the light thrown at it from the lights of towns and it worsens the impact of light pollution on the viewers. When the clouds are not seen while star gazing, it means its an unpolluted place, and where it can be seen with such colors it means its a light polluted place.

Also, excessive usage of light in the night just increases the usage of energy there by increases the demand/shortage for power. And as per International Dark Sky Association (IDA) : “We do need some light at night, but much of it is wasted by lights that are overly bright or left on when not needed. Unshielded fixtures waste the most energy. Their lights shine upward instead of down on the ground where it’s needed. In fact, IDA estimates that that up to 50 percent of all outdoor light is wasted. That adds up to $3.3 billion and the release of 21 million tons of CO2 per year! To offset all that CO2, we’d have to plan 875 million trees annually”. Hence I ventured out to capture the beauty of the night sky to spread the word to the masses to show what the city dwellers like myself have been missing.  Hence this small comparison of the Light Pollution.

Yosemite National Park is one of the largest and oldest national parks in the US and is any landscape photographers dream destination. The park has an elevation range from 2,127 to 13,114 ft. Almost 95% of the park is designated wilderness. The geology of the Yosemite area is characterized by granitic rocks and remnants of older rock. About 1 million years ago, snow and ice accumulated, forming glaciers at the higher alpine meadows that moved down the river valleys. The down slope movement of the ice masses cut and sculpted the U-shaped valley that is now the Yosemite Valley. As one enters Yosemite from the South Entrance the Tunnel View is the first major view point one will hit. It is such a mind blowing experience for the first timers. A beautiful Bridalveil waterfall with the most striking granite peaks of Yosemite, El Capitan, and the Half Dome are seen from this view point.

Tunnel View of Bridalveil and Half Dome

As one drives along the valley, the first view of the iconic waterfall can be seen to the left. The most famous Yosemite Waterfalls is a 3 tier falls with the upper falls, middle section and the lower falls. It totals up to 2,425 feet from the top of the upper fall to the base of the lower fall. It is the highest measured waterfall in North America and the 6th highest in the world. The waterfall is a pure snow fed falls and it will be in full flow during the spring runoff with a very narrow window of March to May. It will slowly trickle down and dry out late summer until it is replenished by next year snow pack or occasional rains.

Yosemite Falls and Merced River

For the hikers and climbers, Yosemite provides ample opportunities to explore the wilderness with numerous trails with the most famous Mist trail that goes thru two major waterfalls – Vernal and Nevada, upto the Half Dome.

                                                                                    Vernal Falls from John Muir Trail

                                                                                        Nevada Falls on a Foggy Day

Apart from the beautiful waterfalls and the Merced River, the valley provides some amazing opportunity to view wild life including black bears, coyotes, foxes, deer and very rarely the amazing mountain lions.

                                                                                                          Deer Fight

The valley can become even more magical during the winter with lot of snow getting accumulated in the higher elevations of the park and occasionally to the valley as well. The winter though not a favorite time for most of the visitors, it provides a very quiet peaceful environment to enjoy the valley. The road to glacier point another favorite destination to view the whole valley will be closed for the winter and most of the spring until all the snow melts. When the road opens up for traffic by late May/ early June (Depending on the Snow Season) it provides amazing opportunity and an entirely different view of the valley.

                                                                            Yosemite Falls in full moon from Glacier Point.

Summing up, Yosemite offers something for everyone. One can just do a drive thru the valley enjoying the views or get down and do a small hike to some of the easily accessible waterfalls such as Bridal Veil, Lower Yosemite Falls or do longer, more strenuous hikes to reach the interior and to enjoy more pristine sceneries and waterfalls.

                                                                                             Enjoying the Winter View

“I am a city dweller and I have no clue how a dark sky looks” – is probably a very common statement among most of the people who work and live in big cities and towns. I myself being from a metropolitan area, have never experienced dark sky or seen the Milky Way until I visited the International Dark Sky Association Dark Sky Park in PA called Cherry Springs State Park. I was stunned to see the Milky Way rise and move across the sky.

The effect on the first time viewer on seeing the dark sky has been portrayed in the photograph above where a person, completely captivated by the beauty of night sky, stood still for a 30s exposure in a impromptu photograph as the person was completely unaware that I was taking a picture.
The night sky when dark is so amazing to view that our Neighboring galaxy becomes visible to our naked eye. The Andromeda a spiral galaxy can be seen very clearly in the night sky when there is no light pollution and there is no moon to pollute the sky. The photograph below shows the Andromeda, which is seen as a bright spot with a haze around it. The haze is the galaxy’s gaseous nebula.

Also there are several nebulas that become visible in the night sky when the sky is dark and the most easily identifiable nebula that can be seen is the Orion Nebula as shown in the picture below. The Orion Nebula can be easily viewed using a telescope or a binocular. The photo below was captured using the Sky Tracker at 600mm telephoto lens on a crop sensor.

The light pollution from cities is so high nowadays and the clouds/smog from the cities seem to exaggerate the light pollution. Clouds tend to sting on to the light that is directly coming from the cities and towns there by vastly reducing the darkness of the sky.

The usual light pollution is visible in the countryside near to a town or a city as a form of light domes towards the horizon. Even in some of the dark sites the light domes are prevalent which shows that we are quickly losing our dark skies as the towns and cities expand and the new establishments crop up in every place. Even though these are helpful and increase and improve the travel experience, it would be wise for these establishments to give heed to protect our Dark Skies that can be seen in remote locations as the Maroon Lake in Colorado.

Light pollution not just prevents us to see the spectacular Milky Way or the Nebulas, it vastly affects the animals which gets distracted to the unnatural light pollution from the cities and towns. Also it prevents us from studying the night sky from some of the observatories such as Griffith, and Mount Wilson, which are greatly affected by the light pollution of Los Angeles.

The International Dark-Sky Association (http://www.darksky.org) is an organization that works hard to create awareness of the Dark Sky among people and the week from April 20th to 26th of 2014 is being celebrated as International Dark Sky Week. We should join hands with them in trying to reduce light pollution and live the dream of gazing at stars from where we live and not drive several miles to get a glimpse of it.