Nauticaltwilight Archives - Bliss Photographics

Posted on December 2, 2019November 25, 2019 by Frank Bliss

Landscape Under Moonlight

Landscape Under Moonlight is a 3 second time exposure under very dark Nautical Twilight skies.

Nothing but Moonlight is illuminating this 40 mile deep landscape. The “Red Hills” are the distant ridge across the wide “Little Powder” River valley. I am located 600 feet above the valley floor on the Pass road (Trail Creek) to Rockypoint Wyoming. Looking toward the west/northwest the moon is about as far north as it travels in it’s movement around the planet.

There is no way to properly expose the moon AND gather the very faint light reflected back at my lens. So it might as well be as bright as the sun up in the corner. This is definitely hard to color correct. There were a lot of subtle hues and tones that weren’t natural because of the time exposure. The cloud highlights are indeed excessive as the time exposure allowed it to over saturate. Without digitally replacing that whole area of the image, I decided to leave it as it is.

Photorealism goes out the window a time exposure. They seem to always excessively expose something it seems lolol. Still the technology is very limited in it’s ability to see as well as the human eye which could resolve this. Reading under this light MIGHT be possible under moonlight . No camera on earth could bring this out with the moon’s face properly exposed. To do otherwise would be to have a composite image and not a genuine unaltered photo in this light.

Location: The Pass to Rockypoint on Trail Creek Road, Northern Campbell Country Wyoming. That’s Montana off in the distance. I am standing about 4 miles from the Montana border and those mountains ARE in Montana. (Wyotana)

Title: Landscape Under Moonlight

Posted on November 6, 2019November 16, 2019 by Bliss

Alpenglow Across the Barnyard

Caught Coming Home the other night: Alpenglow across the Barnyard

Really dark scenes like this are best caught on a tripod. I have a vehicle window clamp that works pretty well for lenses under about 8 or 9 pounds. I’ve had several cameras on that window before lol. One is easy. The reflections in the windows of this rather large Barn Structure we have (286 feet by 94 feet I believe) which is about the size of a regulation foot ball field. The Moon was up far to the left and I was trying like heck to see it’s reflection in the windows but I couldn’t get low enough to catch it. Durn Ground was in the way. Some things you just have no or little control of.😜”Alpenglow Across the Barnyard”

Time exposure, night time about 30 minutes after sunset at the beginning of Nautical Twilight. About 2 seconds worth of shake free camera. (you have to turn down the volume on the stereo AND turn off the car to avoid that. A real mood breaker since I tend to do photography with some jamming tune in the backcountry.

Alpenglow:

When you have a LOT of “stuff” in the atmosphere plus a LOT of red/orange light filtering through it, leads to Alpenglow. The low angle sun light plows through hundreds of miles of air, clouds, moisture, and dust. In this case, ICE is a major sun projection screen lighting up with the infusion of colored hues, mostly orange here but I’ve seen EVERY color in Alpenglow. Often the Gradients can literally be a rainbow gradient. I’ve seen and photographed it numerous times.

You can count the number of architectural silhouettes I’ve published on both hands I’m pretty sure. My tendency is to work nature not the man made stuff up on ranch…

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Posted on October 16, 2019October 10, 2019 by Bliss

Reflections Grassy Knob Lake

“Reflections Grassy Knob Lake” is a study I did of this interesting shape (use of negative space) within the overall environment of rippled/reflected Nautical Twilight Sky off a lake on the Montana/Wyoming borderline. There was enough wind to ripple and the sky was starting to blaze. Click

As I move about in the backcountry here in the borderlans…I often see little areas of Zen like this almost everywhere but the hard part is capturing the scene in my photon capture boxes..🤔

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Posted on October 16, 2019October 11, 2019 by Bliss

Twilight Alpenglow Over the Big Horn Mountains

“Twilight Alpenglow over the Big Horn Mountains” was taken well into Nautical Twilight. (Do you know your 3 twilights and when they occur?) Bear in mind I consider anything sky in the morning BEFORE the sun crosses the horizon still to be at Night and in the evening, once the sun slips behind the horizon, it’s night too…. Lenticular Clouds in Silhouette are always fun. I bet they were impressive from the other side of the hill at sunset. They typically form over bumps in the terrain.

This sky started out Bright Orange at sunset with the same clouds but slowly faded to the longer wave length light red…finally to black with no stars because enough overcast to preclude/veil stars in the frame. This 5 second time exposure highlights cloud shadows and the still glowing atmospheric ice over the Mountains. (Alpenglow is caused by the scattering of the color of light that makes it through hundreds of miles of low angle atmosphere. Typically a deep winter thing every night but I see it every month up here).
Those 13000 feet high “hills” are 130 miles from my camera which is sitting on a 4000 foot in elevation ridge almost 2 full Wyoming counties east of the Big Horns.

Photographers notes. Unless your really steady (on xanax or something), you need a tripod for any exposure longer than about 1/15th second exposure and that’s if your really good…. No star tracking required here so just a tripod will do.

Gear.. Sony Alpha 7R4, Canon 800mm Telephoto (Vintage plus mixed cam/lens brands which actually works fine with the right Metabones adaptor between thank you). Tripod. Also a Big Tall Hill top in Montana looking across the border into Wyoming.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)