So last weekend, I went to a “Sunsets & Star Trails” workshop out near Boonah (for those of you not familiar with Brisbane geography, that’s about an hour’s drive into the country from my house). It was the second workshop I did with Bluedog Photography, and I can’t recommend them enough. It was a great night, full of good conversations, lots of stargazing, and plenty of learning about proper photography techniques that I can hopefully apply in the future.

The afternoon started out at the Royal Hotel in Roadvale, a small town of about 600 people that I can’t say I’d heard of before reading the description of the workshop. It’s a beautiful little country town, built on rolling hills with larger mountains looming in the distance, with one main street with a country store and the aforementioned Royal Hotel. After a bit of a meet-and-greet, we headed out to the private property of Suellen, who so graciously let us invade her home all night.

Garry, one of the tutors, gave us a quick tutorial on what we were going to need to look for before sending us off into the wild of the large yard. Essentially, we needed to find a good spot with some nice framing that faced roughly south, and we needed to have it fully set up before dark. I had a good wander throughout the entire yard. Luckily my knee has gotten significantly better than it was in April (when I had arthroscopic surgery for to clean up some cartilage that had torn off the back of my kneecap) so I could actually kneel down and try to find somewhat different angles on the same photograph. I managed to get a few late afternoon/verging on sunset photos this way. I was especially happy with the swingset photo that’s in this shot.

I finally found a corner of the yard near the old dunny that I was happy with. There were quite a few possible angles to go with, but I chose a thistle, which would later come back to bite me when I realized I wasn’t actually facing south and needed to readjust my shot. This was the first of a few things to go slightly awry during the evening, but it was all a learning experience, right? In the dark, I managed to get my tripod out of the gnarled bushes I had gotten it entangled in and moved it to frame the shot with a stark, winter-time frangipani tree. After following all of Garry’s instructions, I decided to go for my first star trails shot (star trails, for those that don’t know, are the streaks in the sky you can capture when you take long-exposure night shots. See further down in this post for an example). This involved using my remote release so I didn’t introduce camera shake to the shot. Unfortunately, the remote didn’t have the other very important feature I needed for this exercise–a lock. That meant that if I wanted to get a 45-minute long exposure shot, I would have to hold down a button for 45 minutes. “Oh well,” I thought. “I’m here, I might as well give it a shot because that’s all I’m going to get with this equipment.”

After 10 minutes, my thumb started falling asleep and suddenly twitched, letting go of the shutter and finishing the exposure. Needless to say, I wasn’t amused! I talked to both Garry and Nick; between the three of us, we managed to devise a contraption to hold the remote button down without me being there. It sounds pretty simple–scotch tape a piece of gravel down on the remote, and then tape the remote to the tripod. However, we had a bit of trouble getting it rigged because the remote had to be aimed at the camera at all times–start taping and accidentally move its line of sight and the shutter would close. It look us about 20 minutes to get it set up the first time, but finally we were able to sneak away from the camera without hearing the shutter click.

From then on, I felt a lot more social! I was able to go over to the main group (since my camera was well away from everyone else’s) and chat with everyone else. We were all amazed at the number of stars we were seeing, especially given the cloud cover around sunset. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky to obscure the twinkling of the stars or the slight haziness that marked out the band of the Milky Way sprawling across the sky.

By the end of the night, each of us had 2-3 shots of star trails. I know, you’re thinking, “What? She went out for 7 hours and got 2 photos?” Each photo takes 45 minutes to shoot and another 45 minutes to process for noise reduction, so it’s a very time-consuming and patience-testing endeavour! I was happy that I got any star trails at all after the hassle I had to go through with my remote, although now I have to do a bit of investigation to figure out why they came out the way they did. Even though the camera seemed to process the picture to reduce the noise, both of my shots are still nearly obscured by the huge amount of noise in them. And since I took the photos at f5.6 and ISO 200 with noise reduction, there really shouldn’t be noise like this in the shot. Everyone else had the same settings as me and their shots came out much better than this, so I’m hoping that there’s not a problem with my camera! If anyone that’s reading this is a Pentax expert, please comment and let me know

Anyway, all in all, it was a great night and well worth the money and the trip out there. I now feel a lot more confident with my night shooting and am really hoping to get away from the city to try it again soon.

I know you guys might have been hoping for a conclusion to my previous post. It is in the works, but I thought I’d get these photos up while I was at the internet cafe.

Without further ado, here’s the list of what’s been added/updated (denoted by a ***):

New Zealand
***Queenstown: more from Deer Park Heights & the Remarkables.
***The Milford Track: from days 3 & 4 of the track (with plenty from going over Mackinnon Pass).
Milford Sound from Land: from around Milford Sound township.
Milford Overnight Cruise: from my overnight on the Milford Wanderer in the beautiful fiord of Milford.
The Kepler Track: from my overnight trek onto the Kepler Track, up to Mt. Luxmore & Luxmore Hut and back.
Kayaking Doubtful Sound: from my 5 hours on remote Doubtful Sound and the long (but stunning) trip to/from the sound.
Warbirds over Wanaka: from the biennial warbirds airshow held at Wanaka airfield.
The West Coast Road: from my day-long bus trip between Wanaka and Franz Josef Glacier.
***Franz Ice Climbing & Quad Biking: plenty more shots of me looking stupid trying to climb ice walls and from the Waiho river valley where I went quad biking the next day.
Drive Across Arthur’s Pass: from my day-long bus trip between Franz Josef Glacier and Christchurch.

Australia
Queensland Sunsets: sunset shots from a few different days in Queensland.
Queensland Flowers: currently only shots of some pink hibiscus in James’ mother’s garden, but I’m hoping to add more when I go back sometime.
Queensland Animals: shots of kookaburras and blue-tongued lizards.
My Australian Family: some of my favorite shots from some photos James’ family and I took while I was up the Sunshine Coast.
Apartments in Perth: pictures from my (very fancy) temporary accommodation. None of my current apartment, and those will probably only be available to “friends” on Flickr once I do add them.
Kings Park: the beautiful Kings Park, which was just up the hill from my temporary accommodation. Also, shots of the ANZAC Day dawn service held at the war memorial there.
Scarborough Beach: my first glimpse of the Indian Ocean!
General Perth: where I’ll chuck all my pictures that don’t fit into other sets from Perth. Right now, it’s just fireworks pictures from a display I was lucky enough to see a couple weeks ago.
John Forrest National Park: the “Australian” pictures everyone is waiting to see. These are from a fun BBQ I went to yesterday up in the hills near Perth. Plenty of red dirt, gum trees, kookaburras, and kangaroos!

Anyway, I got an interesting email a couple weeks back asking to include one of my pictures of the Shubert Theatre in NY in the most recent Schmap Guide for NY. Apparently Schmap is a cool little service that provides travel guides you can download to your computer. I’d never heard of them before, but they seem to have good information on a lot of places around the globe.

Well, I submitted my picture for consideration without actually knowing which picture of the Shubert it was. Turns out, as you might expect, that it is the one accompanying this entry–me looking goofy and posing in a cardboard cutout outside the theatre. You can’t tell, but I’m telling the silly French knights that their mothers were hamsters and their fathers smelled of elderberries, just to give them a taste of their own medicine.

My picture can be found in the Sights and Attractions–Hell’s Kitchen section of the Schmap Guide to NY. Just click on “Shubert Theatre” and then click the right arrow (if my picture doesn’t load on the right-hand side to begin with). I should be the second picture.