Zion Nights
Category: LIK Fine Art
Zion, Utah
Nearly all of my photographs begin with a vision. For this image in Utah I wanted the heavens to connect somehow with Mother Earth and the magic of Zion brought me back to this location to make this a reality.
When people look a the Milky Way, they see it in real time. The human eye perceives millions of stars as a white milky looking cloud. Experimenting with long exposures and a startracker opened up a totally new world of visual opportunity to me—a whole new perspective! The results blew my mind! With long exposures, the camera captures complex light, color and dynamic range that the human eye simply cannot comprehend in real time—the colored gases of the nebulae. These previously concealed colors and tones proved to be a staggering revelation!
As dusk approached, I captured my first exposure for the Watchman mountain and the river valley below. I then waited for the right light and exposed another image to capture the warm glow of the sunset. After watching the sun slowly disappear behind the horizon, I stood in complete darkness as I patiently waited for the Milky Way to be in the ideal position. Now was the time to capture my longest exposure of the evening with the help of my startracker. This was the critical moment which would assure that the Milky Way could finally be revealed in all its astonishing splendor.
The combination of the multiple exposures created the exact mood I had been envisioning in my mind. The location with its soft water combined with the natural beauty of Zion may have even exceeded my hopes for the image. It truly captured Mother Earth merging with the heavens in a commanding and bold new vista.
