Aus Photographic Workshop 2017

Silk Painting Sunset - Canon 40D, Canon 70-200 f/4 IS, 1/100, f/4, ISO 100

Once again, I was lucky enough to co-present at the Aus Photographic Workshop, together with Wicus Leeuwner and JJ van Heerden, 21 - 27 May 2017. I cashed in all my Brownie points (leaving my wife with two little kids) and headed off to the desert for a week.

Once again, I concentrated on night photography, but my favourite image is the above sunset. It was taken at God's Window (a mountain overlooking the Garub Plains), and shows the sun seen through roughly 100km of air, as it sets beyond Lüderitz. It somehow reminds me of a Chinese silk painting, hence the title.

Night skies updated

Cederberg Skies - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 12x30sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200

I have tweaked some of my recent night sky pictures, here they are.

The above shot was taken during a weekend in the Cederberg region. It was taken during a half moon, which is nice for illuminating the landscape, but a little bright for the stars. The Magellanic Clouds are visible, but they're hiding among the terrestrial clouds low over the horizon.

Aus Workshop 2016

Tree and Dune - Fuji x100s, 1/100, f/8, ISO 200, Polarizer

The Aus Photography Workshop with Wicus Leeuwner and JJ van Heerden was a great success! It was an excellent learning experience for me, I had much fun and got some decent shots.

I suspect that my blog has in common with Playboy that most people come here for the pictures rather than the text. So I'll oblige with lots of pics below the fold (SFW, don't worry), along with some descriptions.

Nightskies with the Fuji X-Pro2

Pearly Beach Skies 1 - Fuji X-Pro2 + 16mm f/1.4, 32x8sec, f/1.4, ISO 3200

Thanks to Hein Hough from Fujifilm South Africa, I was recently able to borrow the new Fuji X-Pro2, together with the 18-55mm, f/2.8-4 and 16mm f/1.4 lenses. What a lot of fun I had!

Come join me in Namibia!

God's Window - Canon 40D + Tokina 11-16, 0.6sec + 1/6 + 1/25, F/16, HDR

Here is the big news I alluded to last time: I'm going to the Aus Photography workshop, held at Klein Aus Vista in Southern Namibia, 5 - 11 June 2016. This time, I'll be going as an instructor, specifically to teach night photography under the leadership of Wicus Leeuwner and JJ van Heerden. Read on to see what you can expect at the workshop.

Quiver Tree Poetry!

Quiver Trees by Night 1 - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 6x30sec, f/2.8. ISO 3200, Nodal Ninja

No, this is not a new image. But I am very excited that my fellow South African, Walter Schwim, has written a poem on quiver trees that perfectly accompanies Quiver Trees by Night 1 (or 2, for that matter). It was published on Poet's Collective. I reproduce it here with the kind permission of the author:

Chotje’s Vision

(Eyes of the Aloe)

Did you watch a gibbous moon
entangled in those starfish eyes
of wise old thorny Kokerboom
beneath Namakwa’s starry skies?
Did you touch his horny hide 
and ask him pardon for your rude
request that he in you confide
his thoughts and secrets un-eschewed?
Did he take you far away
beyond the feeble lunar glow
into his gleaming milky way
to places only Kokers know?
Where spirits fly on angel wings
for starfish eyes can see all things.

© WW Schwim, 2014

Theewaterskloof Dam

Theewaterskloof Dam after Dark - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 20x30sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200

Theewaterskloof Dam lies just over the Franschhoek Pass. When it was established in 1978, it flooded a number of trees, whose bleached skeletons can still be seen poking out of the water. Some of them can be found on the sandy shores of the dam, depending on water levels, and make excellent photographic subjects. For example, The Eye of Sauron (mentioned in my previous post on infrared photography) was taken there back in 2011.

I arrived there late one afternoon a few weeks ago, just in time to catch the last light on some of the trees. I blundered along the swampy shore (it had been raining heavily earlier that week) and tried to reach the trees I had photographed two years ago, but in the gathering dark I eventually gave up and turned back. Next time I'll bring gum boots!

As the last of twilight faded away, the only remaining illumination was the light pollution from Franschhoek and Stellenbosch behind the mountains - and from the Milky Way, which was rising in the East.

I set up my tripod and panoramic head and took a series of 30second exposures at ISO 3200 (the highest my old 40D can manage) and f/2.8, which I eventually stitched into the panorama above. I'll show you my post-processing below. It's quite similar to how I made the Quiver Trees by Night series.

Quiver Trees by Night 2 Remastered

Quiver Trees by Night 2 has been remastered, in particular I have fixed the aspect ratio to 5:2, like the other two images in the series, by including more sky - cropping the sides was not an option. I had to rephotoshop the whole thing (see here how), so it looks a little different. Let me know in the comments if you consider this an improvement.

Quiver Trees by Night 2v2 - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 12x30sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200, Nodal Ninja

As a result, the Quiver Trees by Night triplet now fits together as a whole, and is more easily framed as all have the same 5:2 aspect ratio.

Special Offer

To celebrate this, I'm making the following special offer for those who wish to buy all three prints:

Quiver Trees by Night 1, 2 and 3, 35x14cm (14"x5.5"), printed on metallic paper, airmailed anywhere in the world for only $99.

Quiver Trees by Night 1, 2 & 3

I finally got around to completing my third Panorama of the Quiver Tree Forest, as well as reprocessing the first one to bring out detail in the shadow regions. The three images now form a pleasing triple:

Quiver Trees by Night 1 - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 6x30sec, f/2.8. ISO 3200, Nodal Ninja

Quiver Trees by Night 2 - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 12x30sec, f/2.8. ISO 3200, Nodal Ninja

Quiver Trees by Night 3 - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 16x30sec, f/2.8. ISO 3200, Nodal Ninja

Notice the Magellanic Clouds in the third image.

More Night Skies

Galactic Arch - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 13x30sec, f/2.8. ISO 3200

Special thanks to Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer) for linking to my pictures and thereby doubling my all-time pageviews overnight! As a reward to all the BA faithfuls, I have posted a few of my earlier night sky images. Sorry if they don't quite live up to the Quiver Trees by Night series, but I am still learning. On the other hand, I have finally overcome some hugin glitches (by installing it on another machine) and managed to stitch a third Quiver Tree by Night panorama. Now it will need some heavy photoshopping, for which I don't really have time at the moment, but I will post it when it's done.

The above shot was taken at Nuwerus, a guest farm in the Cederberg, in July 2011. These are the most Southern quiver trees I've ever seen. It was taken in moonlight (about 35% full), which is why the foreground is so well illuminated. This shows nicely that moonlight is actually the same colour as sunlight, just darker. Actually, the moon was already too full in this image, so I had a hard time extracting enough contrast from the night sky. I had actually made a similar panorama the night before, when the moon was still darker - but the next morning my memory card died and took all my pictures with it! Thus, I retook the panorama that evening, and this is the result. The lesson is: never buy discount memory cards - stick to the well-known brands, even if they are more expensive. At least this image won me a nice little camera backpack from Pix Magazine.

Moonlit Star Trails - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 45min, f/4, ISO 200

Early Morning Star Trails - Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16, 30mins, f/4, ISO 200

Above are two startrails I took that same night. The first is moonlit, the second was taken in the early morning hours, after the moon set, but the sky started getting light towards the end. This is the celestial South pole you're seeing, of course, so you will also notice the two Magellanic Clouds. The quiver tree in the foregound was illuminated with my flashlight. These are long, single exposures, which unfortunately leads to some hot pixels in the image. One can cancel those with a darkframe subtraction, but the darkframe would have to be a similar exposure length - and I didn't have the time for that. An alternative is to take many shorter exposures and then to merge them, using software like Startrails.exe.

Secret Pool by Moonlight - Canon 40D, Canon 17-55, 10x30sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200

This shot is another moonlit panorama, also taken in the Cederberg, but at Beaverlac. Later that night I took some startrails (after the moon had set), fell asleep next to my tripod, and was woken by an otter :)

Baobab & Milky Way - Canon 40D, Canon 17-55, 30sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600

Here is my first successful night sky photo, taken in the village of Antsiraraka in Madagscar, July 2010, with a baobab in the foreground. I shot at ISO 1600, which turned out not to be enough, so I had to push the exposure in postprocessing. The result is inferior to shooting at ISO 3200 directly.