Zion

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(CLICK FOR BIG!)

This panorama took FOREVER to create. I'd estimate that it took about 8 or 9 hours. The full image consists of over 24 photos of the area and there are two separate panoramas put together for this image, one of the foreground and one of the Milky Way. After planning everything out with PhotoPills I knew I'd need to start shooting basically right before the end of blue hour (being in a valley, each exposure was going to take many minutes to gather enough light at lower ISO).

It took me about 4 hours of shooting to completely cover the area I needed for the foreground. I learned as I went that it took a car about 10 minutes to drive from the far right side of this image to the far left and that I wanted to capture what felt like a steady, single line of light through the foreground. In actuality I timed each 4-ish minute exposure with a different car at a different position and planned to bring it all together in post. The logistics of this almost saw me quit the project more than once. Imagine waiting for a car for an unknowable amount of time, it starts its move up the frame, then as you start the exposure the cars stops and turns around, the headlights at one point shining into nearby trees and up AT the camera location at a point, creating an unusable frame. Anyway, eventually I captured all of the foreground with several re-checks (me flipping through the captured exposures and trying my best to mentally stitch them all together in my mind) and I was able to finally settle in and wait for the Milky Way to rise high enough to get above the massive mountains that create Zion's valley. I ended up waiting most of the night, sitting there, trying to lay on the hill in a way to catch a few z's. Failing that, I spend time picking cactus out of my socks.

After many hours the Milky Way's span was high enough in the sky and I was able to capture the panorama. I took special note of various other things; the general 'blueness' of the atmospheric perspective and foreground lit only by starlight being chief in the fore of my mind as I packed up.

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Photo Details:
Camera: Nikon D810
Lens: Nikon AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED
14mm/ƒ/2.8/20s/ISO 8000

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