Gone to See America August 2010 Road Trip. Day 7: Eastern Sierra Photography Workshop with Michael Mariant. Alabama Hills, CARMA Radio Telescopes.
A combination of still and time-lapse videos of the Night Sky and Milky Way viewed from the grounds of the CARMA Radio Telescope Array. CARMA is the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter Wave Astronomy run by Caltech, Berkeley, Univ Indiana Urbana, and Univ Maryland. It is located in the High Desert at Cedar Flats in the Inyo Mountains near Bishop, California. The research facility was shut down in 2015.
Eleven-years ago on a lark I drove from Boulder to Colorado Springs and then to Manitou Springs to take the Cog Wheeled Railroad to the summit of Pikes Peak. Little did I know that you needed reservations for the cog rail trip to Pikes Peak, and that all trips were sold out for the day. I was very lucky that someone in line before me was unhappy that their party was not all sitting together and turned in their tickets. Once I got on board the train, I realized that I won the lottery since my ticket was for the front seat. This allowed me to set up a tripod and camera to capture images for a time-lapse video for the train ride. So as not to annoy the other passengers on the train I used a small Gitzo travel tripod, my smallest camera body, and a small lens. Going up the mountain I used a 18-200 mm lens at 18 mm. Going down the mountain my seat was now in the rear of the train looking back. For this I used a 10.5 mm fisheye lens. This was a case of being in the right place at the right time!!!
The previous time I tried to reach the peak in my car back in 1976 I failed. The car vapor locked at 13000 feet. I had to coast down the mountain road. When stopped at 10,000 feet for a brake & safety check, the guy commented that my Volvo really ran quietly. Little did he know that my engine wasn’t running. Just glad that there was an incline to keep coasting down. The engine finally restarted at about 8000 feet.
Steam Engine at Pikes Peak Cog Railroad. Image taken with a Nikon D200 and 10.5 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 100, 10.5 mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, Focus Magic, Topaz Define, and Photoshop CS5.
Time-Lapse video of a Poppy flower opening. I had to get up early (~ 5 AM) to catch this. Nikon D800 camera and 105 mm f/2.8 macro lens (ISO Auto, 105 mm, f/8, 1/125 sec) taking images every 6 seconds for about 90 minutes. I see another flower will probably open tomorrow, so I plan to try it again.
