Blue Planet Photography

From John Sexton’s newsletter:

ANSEL ADAMS MOON AND HALF DOME ENCORE NOVEMBER 28, 2009

I suspect that many readers of this newsletter are already aware of this news, but in case you are not I wanted to share with you that, on Saturday, November 28th, at 4:04 PM PST a celestial encore of Ansel’s iconic Moon and Half Dome image will occur in Yosemite. The moon will be a fraction of a degree north of where it was on December 28th, 1960 when Ansel made his well-known image.

Texas State University Astronomer, Donald W. Olson, and his team have studied a number of Ansel’s famous moon photographs, and worked out the exact dates the negatives were made. On November 28th the sun will be about 1.5 degrees off of its 1960 position, so the shadows, as well as the position of the moon, will be very similar… that is if the weather cooperates and the sun is out at that time! The Ansel Adams Gallery is presenting a special program focused on the making and printing of Moon and Half Dome on the afternoon of the 28th. You can check out the Ansel Adams Gallery web site for more information or call them at 209-372-4413. Here is a link to the page about the special program:
http://theanseladamsgallery.blogspot.com/2009/11/moon-and-half-dome-encore-november-28.html

I imagine if the weather is good there will be quite a crowd in the Ahwahnee Meadow. Since the moon is a tiny bit to the north of where it was when Ansel made his photograph, it will be necessary for photographers to position themselves a short distance to the south of Ansel’s 1960 camera position. In addition, it will be necessary for photographers to back up a bit further west from Half Dome, because trees have grown up and partly blocked the view from the precise spot where Ansel placed his tripod so many years ago. I think the best photograph will likely be of the crowd of photographers and tripods attempting to emulate Ansel’s photograph. I hope a few photographers are successful in making images that interpret this event with new and different eyes.

If you’re worried about where to set up your tripod, you can go to Donald Olson’s Texas State University web site and check out the aerial photograph with a suggested tripod location diagram. Amazing!! http://uweb.txstate.edu/%7Edo01/moonandhalfdomeencore.htm

For those that won’t be able to attend the event (like us), but want to experience some of the excitement, try checking out the Yosemite Association’s Ahwahnee Meadow web cam. If the weather cooperates, it should be an excellent view… complete with photographers! Here’s the link: http://www.yosemite.org/129/Web-Cam-View.htm

As an added bonus, the Gallery in Yosemite will host an opening reception for Alan Ross from 5:00 to 6:30 PM. This would be a great time to meet Alan and see his beautiful photographs, which are on display at the Gallery through January 3, 2010.

David Hobby, the ever-present Strobist, has worked with Rosco to create a “Strobist Kit” of the common colored gels used for color correcting your on or off-camera flash lighting. Sized for most shoe-mounted flash units, the kits contain:

5 each of
Cinegel #3202 Full CTB (change to blue)
Cinegel #3204 1/2 CTB
Cinegel #3208 1/4 CTB
Cinegel #3401 Sun 85 CTO (change to orange, converts 5500K to 3200K)
Cinegel #3408 Sun 1/2 CTO
Cinegel #3409 Sun 1/4 CTO
Roscolux #08 Pale Gold (warming with pink for skin tones)
Cinegel #3304 Tough Plusgreen (color correction for cool white flourescent)

2 each of
Cinegel #3415 N.15 Neutral Density
Cinegel #3403 N.6 ND
Cinegel #3404 N.9 ND

1 each of
Roscolux #12 Straw (yellow)
Roscolux #23 Orange
Roscolux #26 Light red
Roscolux #33 No Color Pink
Roscolux #39 Skeleton Exotic Sangria (magenta)
Roscolux #358 Rose Indigo (purple)
Roscolux #80 Primary Blue
Roscolux #375 Cerulean Blue (cyan)
Roscolux #90 Dark Yellow Green

The kit can be ordered from any of a number of distributors for $9.95. See this Rosco page for your favorite distributor.

Before the 1960s we could only imagine what the surface of the moon looked like up close. We, as a species, looking up to the sky and into space used our imagination to illustrate what the surface of other planets might reveal. Some of those illustrations and theories stuck with us for decades until refuted by better technology. Our ability to send remote devices into space as surrogates for earth-bound explorers, and the increasingly rich imagery and data being sent back to us, is nothing short of incredible. Saying that, knowing from the perspective of past history we are only in the very preliminary baby steps of our existence (barely moving our feeble limbs, actually) and there is so much more to come, on the one hand it seems immature to be so amazed. Of course there are interesting planets out there with landscapes, processes, and features completely different from our familiar Terra Firma. Why should we be surprised to see those things given our technology? We should expect it, and we do. If all the other worlds out there looked like Earth there wouldn’t be any reason to explore them. We still would, of course. My point is, we’ve come to take these discoveries and achievements as commonplace, as expected events in the course of our ongoing march of progress. Would people be as apathetic if no discoveries or advances were being made? Would they then complain? Hard to say, I think.

On the other hand, it’s childish wonder and amazement that drives us forward, keeps us interested and engaged, makes us wonder “what if…?” Without curiosity and the will to pursue questions, life and living on Earth would be very, very uninteresting. Why do kids want to be astronauts? It’s the desire and hope to see something new, the adventure of doing something or going somewhere nobody else (or very few) have done or gone before (Sounds familiar, I know, but it’s true).

Early explorers were curious about what was over the next hill. Once that was found out, then it was across the river, then across the ocean, now across space (though we’re still working on ‘in the ocean’). When we were kids, we believed what we were told about the pinpoints of light we saw through a telescope in the backyard; “that’s Venus, that’s Neptune, that’s Mars”. Those pinpoints of identified light sparked our imagination. It wasn’t just any pinpoint in the sky, it was another place we knew about, far away but close to home, visible, but unattainable. What was it like there? Was the sky blue? Were there trees? Was there anyone there? Did the houses have curtains on the windows? Those are the questions (well, maybe not the exact questions) keeping young and older minds looking forward, figuring out how to find the answer, giving them a purpose and something to do. Without curiosity and childish wonder we would certainly give up not long after the question was posed.

I’ve always been fascinated by space and technology. Probably because I grew up in the 1960s and watched the first step on the moon. It was brand new. It was pushing the envelope of what was possible. It was our first really close look at the surface of another world. It was cool.

But can there be too much technology? There’s so much going on now compared with a few decades ago. I imagine that comment echoes the sentiment voiced by generations going back to the beginning of history and presages the same comment that will be stated 3 - 4 decades from now by the current “technologically advanced” generation. We are so much more concerned with events and people so far outside of our personal sphere of influence than we used to be (or needed to be). Throughout history, successive generations have had to deal with the added load technology placed on their lives but, initially, the sphere of technological influence was just around the home; tools that improved hunting or farming. A villager still had to walk to the neighbor’s house to get the local news. At first, these advances were truly beneficial and made life a little easier. Today, we don’t have to leave our bed to see, hear, and interact with a sphere that encircles the globe. There’s so much noise I think it dampens our ability to be amazed, restricts our childish wonder, it makes us jaded toward things we should be staring at open-mouthed.

What does this have to do with Mars?

The tracks of Opportunity in the soil near Victoria Crater

These are images of the Martian surface from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the onboard HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera.

If you can dampen the noise, you can still feel the wonder.

(images from NASA. More information about the location and details of each image can be found at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/martian_landscapes.html)

Here is a list of my 2010 photography workshops currently scheduled. There are others in the planning stages, many of them weekend workshops in the Boise, Idaho area or elsewhere in Idaho. Keep up to date on workshops being offered by going to http://www.blueplanetphoto.com/workshops2.htm to see the schedule. Click on the workshop name to go to a description and registration page. You are also welcome to subscribe to my workshop newsletter, sent out quarterly. Go to http://www.blueplanetphoto.com/newsletter.htm to subscribe.

• January 9 - 10: The Fine Art Figure in the Studio
• January 16: Critical Feedback for Photographers
• April 6 - 13: Central and Northern Oregon Coast
• April 14 - 19: Columbia River Gorge, Oregon
• April 22 - 27: Painted Hills, Oregon
• May 7 - 9: Bruneau Dunes State Park, Idaho
• June 4 - 10: Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Kansas
• June 18 - 20: The Fine Art Figure Outdoors
• June 24 - 29: McCall, Idaho
• July 8 - 19: Vancouver Island, British Columbia
• August 4 - 9: Spruce Island, Alaska
• September 10 - 12: Stanley, Idaho, and the Sawtooth Mountains
• September 16 - 22: Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Kansas
• October 2 - 10: Central and Northern Oregon Coast
• October 12 - 17: Columbia River Gorge, Oregon
• October 21 - 28: Kroschel Wildlife Center and Bald Eagles, Alaska
• November 4 - 10: Vancouver Island Storm Watch, British Columbia
• December 1 - 7: Oregon Coast Storm Watch
• December 9 - 13: Columbia River Gorge in Winter, Oregon
• January 7 - 12, 2011: Solar Max Northern Lights, Alaska