At The End Of The Road

If you look carefully at the horizon you will see a flat rock with a hole in it. That there is the Wolfberg Arch (don't be deceived, that small hole is at least 25 metres high), and this scene was a very pleasing sight for me, knowing I was almost at my destination. It had been a long day hauling up heavy backpacks and camera equipment, and to have the end end in sight was a great feeling. It almost seemed fitting that the clouds were gathering at the 'end of the road'.

Cederberg Mountains

Starry Starry Night

On my recent trip to the Cederberg I planned to try out some astrophotography. This is something I'm very unfamiliar with, and have never tried before. The landscape of the Cederberg is a series of strange rock formations formed over millions of years by the battering winds. One of the most distinctive features of the Cederberg is the Wolfberg Arch, a 30 meter (100ft) high rock wall, with a massive hole straight through the middle.

With this as a subject I experimented with star photography. With essentially one hour to snap away before the moon came up I decided I would try some deep-space photography, as star-trail photography would just be too time consuming. It was a challenge finding the correct settings to get enough light with as little star-trail as possible and as little noise as possible. With my Canon 50D and Sigma 10-20 lens I ended up getting this shot on a 78 second bulb release, at f/5 with an ISO of 1600. I then post-processed it in Photoshop in order to bring out the light of the Milky Way. For those interested I followed an excellent YouTube tutorial by Kenneth Brandon on how to post-process Milky Way shots.

This was a fun experiment, and something I'm sure in time I'll improve on, but for the moment I'm very happy with the result.

I hope you enjoy it!

And please feel free to comment on this and any other of my posts and pictures.

Wolfberg Arch and Milky Way

Photo of the Day: A Very Obliging Lizard!!!

I recently came back from a range of mountains in South Africa called the Cederberg. This area has magnificent rock formations, and reminds me in some ways of the beautiful landscapes of Cappadocia. I will post more pictures of my trip in days to come. 

This guy however was a talking point in itself. He really was beautiful, but strangely also very tame. Normally to capture a shot like this you would have to use a telephoto of sorts in order for him to not be scared away. But this shot was taken with the lens I had been using to take the beautiful scenery around me, which happened to be my Sigma 10-20mm landscape lens. I panned my camera around him, taking a number of shot no longer than a rulers length away from him.

A very obliging lizard!!!