In my waning days in Badlands National Park, I did a 4 1/2 hour star trails time lapse, setting up my camera to take one photo every thirty seconds.  In addition to wanting to create a time lapse video, I wanted to use some of the images to create a star trails photo by stacking the photos together.  Unfortunately, I could not use all of the photos during the time lapse, as a storm came through the area.  But, I was able to select 223 images captured over nearly two hours that were useful for creating a star trails photo.

Why use this method?  Since it was a near-full moon, the light pollution in the sky was too great for a longterm exposure.  Additionally, digital cameras simply cannot take ultra-long exposures due to noise.  My one long attempt, a four-hour exposure, simply had too much noise in it to be useable.  With this technique, a digital photographer could do a star trails photo covering four, five, six hours – the entire night if desired.  The main issue then becomes power, which I have resolved by using a Powerbase battery in connection with an AC/DC Inverter to power my camera.

BLOG UPDATE: I have selected this image as my Print of the Month for June 2009.  You can click here to purchase the print under my special rate for prints in that collection.

It is hard to believe that I have been here a month.  When I first arrived, a month seemed like all the time in the world.  Now, I look back and realize just how short a time it really was. With close to forty blog posts and almost three thousand images captured, I have just begun to explore this place creatively.  Do I have favorite moments?  Do I have favorite places?  Yes and yes, but not specifically.  Any time I explored off the road would be a favorite moment.  When the light was hitting the formations just right, or when I had special encounters with wildlife – whether I captured them on camera or not.  These are all great moments.  There are some paricular day hikes I enjoyed, like the Saddle Trail to Castle Trail, or getting out and exploring on my own in the Conata Basin or the bottom of Norbeck Pass.  I particularly enjoyed my backpacking trip into the Sage Creek Wilderness.  I also found myself making connections with people that shared in my passion for all things Badlands, whether it was because of the great recreational opportunities the park presents or the unique geology.  I think that connecting with people is one of those things about our national parks that makes them special.

It is hard to say more than what I have already said about this place.  But, as a sort of closing, I can only say that a place like the Badlands will always be mysterious, full of opportunity for discovery, awaiting exploration, even for someone who has spent an extended period of time here.  I was speaking to one of the park rangers today, and he told me that in the ten years he has been here, there are still places he has not seen.  Every once in a while he will go to a new place and be surprised by it.  I think we all can learn from that.  No matter how many times you have been somewhere, like a national park, it is always worth returning to.  Unlike one former Alaskan Republican Senator who once said, in referring to a national park, “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”  Quite the opposite is true.  Even if you have seen one, and seen it a lot, it will always offer you awe, wonder, excitement, and a chance to learn, if only you give it the chance.

I want to thank again the National Park Service for this wonderful creative opportunity, and for financial support from the Alaska Council on the Arts and the Alex Johnson Mercantile in Rapid City.  Thanks to the crew at KEVN Black Hills FOX for a nice piece highlighting my work here.  It is such a great opportunity for an artist to be featured in the local media like that, and such a treat given that I grew up in their broadcast area.  Thanks to Randy Brich and his wife Michelle for their interest in my work and for letting my photograph them biking through the park.  Thanks also to Christopher Pellowski, a Ph.D. candidate at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, for his tips and info on Badlands geological formations.  And thanks especially to my wife, Michelle, who is such a source of strength and inspiration as I seek to become the photographer I want and hope to be.

During my month here, I have spent several mornings in the area between Old NE Road and the Big Badlands Overlook.  It gets great morning light and there are many interesting details, shapes and formations, especially once you get off the road and walk around a bit.  I had been wanting to spend some time in the area in the evening, because I had observed it had good light in the evenings, too.  So, for my last evening, I decided to capture some images in that area. 

Unfortunately, the clouds did not cooperate.  I started over in the area of the Big Badlands Overlook, capturing the many wonderful layers through light and shadow.  I saw that the sun was starting to go behind a large band of clouds, so I headed over to the Old NE Road to capture some images there.  I was too late.  Once the sun went behind a particularly large band of clouds – that seemed to materialize out of nowhere – that was it for the evening.  I stopped by to check on my remote camera and put in a new CF (compact flash) card, and headed in for the evening.  Tomorrow morning will be my last time out in the field here.  Hopefully the clouds will clear up tonight – it is raining right now as I type – so I can get one more good morning. 

At last, the weather gods felt I was worthy for a nice, sunny morning.  After getting my second camera ready for the 24-hour time lapse shot, I headed over to the parking lot for the Fossil Trail, and crossed the road over to the Castle Trail.  On my hike last week over the Saddle Trail, I knew I wanted to set up on this spot for some morning light.  There was a thin band of clouds on the horizon, so it denied me that very first, reddish pink light, but the sun quickly rose over that to still provide some great early light.  I wandered around a bit, working along the formations to examine the rocks, cracking mud, and the play of light and shadows.

I worked along the road to the west for a bit, looking for wildlife and to see what else might present itself.  Along the way, I photographed some interesting layers and textures in the Bigfoot Pass area.  I also got my first shot of a grouse, and spent some time with some prairie dogs, mule deer, and pronghorn.  I also took a few of what I call “middle of the road” photos.  Not to say that they were average, but that the only way to take the photo is to set up the tripod in the middle of the road to get the angle and perspective that I want.  For an example, visit my National Parks gallery and you will see a shot of a Utah juniper that I captured one winter morning in Zion National Park, standing right on the double yellow with a tripod.

I decided where I will spend my last morning tomorrow, a spot I have had my eye on for a couple of weeks.  I can only hope that I will be as lucky again tomorrow as I was today with the weather.

While the full moon may thwart my efforts in the last few days to capture a single-exposure star trails image, it sure does help make the nighttime time lapse work better.  Add in a storm with some rain, and then you really get something interesting.  While I slept, my camera worked steadily, capturing one image every 30 seconds for four and a half hours starting at 11:30 p.m.  During that time, the falling rain and moonlight produced something I have never seen before — a nighttime rainbow, called a Lunar Rainbow or Moonbow.  Fortunately for me, I had encased my camera body in a plastic bag in the event of rain.

For camera settings, I chose 400 ISO and set a manual exposure of 10 seconds at f/2.8, with the focal length set at 24mm.  I decided to push the limits of my camera battery, using just the one Nilkon EN-EL3e battery in the body to power the operation.  When I retrieved my camera shortly after 4:00 a.m., there was still one “bar” showing of power.  I then switched lenses, added the Powerbase battery and Brunton solar panel set up to power for a full 24-hour time lapse.  That started at 5:00 a.m. and will continue until sunrise tomorrow morning.

Here is the result of the time lapse from last night.  To see the stars in movement, it is best to maximize the video player.

We had clouds on the bookends of the day today.  Clouds to the east at first light, but they dissipated as the day grew toward late morning.  All through early afternoon, it was sunny with scattered clouds.  But as the evening drew nigh, the cloud layer grew thicker.  I had planned to go over to the Yellow Mounds area for the evening, so I stuck to that plan even with the thick, almost flat cloud layer.  With overcast clouds, rich colors can often come out better than under sunlight.  The blue of glaciers really pops in overcast light.  Flowers are at their best in overcast light. 

This benefit of overcast sky is because the softness of light is a product of the size of the relative light area and its distance to the subject.  The sun, as huge as it is in comparison to the Earth, is relatively small in the sky as a light source when it is clear and sunny.  In contrast, a flat overcast sky produces a rather huge light source – across the entire sky.  Now, for distance.  The sun is considerably farther away than the sky.  Studio portrait photographers use umbrellas or softboxes to increase the surface area of the light, and will often move those softboxes close to the subject.  The larger the surface and closer to the subject, the softer the light. 

So, with that in mind, I thought I would try to capture rich colors.  The yellows and magentas at the Yellow Mounds area.  The fresh new leaves and buds on trees in the park.  Of course, I pulled out and took a few pictures when I found a group of pronghorn close to the road.

But I also took the cloudy evening to think back on the month I have spent here.  I thought of all the places I have explored and captured, and yet also found myself longing for those shots I did not capture.  I thought about how small I thought the Badlands were.  In Alaska, you get a skewed sense of size.  When you look at Alaska parks on a map and compare them to Lower 48 parks, well, there is no comparison.  Alaska has the two largest national parks, the two largest national forests, and the largest state park in the U.S.  But after spending a month here, I came to realilze how large the Badlands really is.  There is still  so much to explore, and I will have to come back again to explore those places that eluded me this time.  Of course, it will be nice to revisit some familiar places, too, as a single location can look vastly different through the seasons, the light, and the weather. 

I started my day spending some time with a reporter and camera man from KEVN, or Black Hills FOX, a FOX affiliate in Rapid City.  I took them out near the northeast entrance and talked about photography, what inspires me, my residency, and whatever else came along.  To illustrate my process, I took a shot that I normally would not have, in harsh, mid-day light.  But, with the help of a warming polarizing filter and a break in the clouds, it turned out actually pretty nice, so I include it in this post (top left image in gallery below).  Here is a link to the FOX interview.   

But my time here in the Badlands is winding down.  I only have two full days left, and one morning.  So far, the weather has been quite cooperative.  I guess it is trying to make up for how it has treated me sometimes on this trip.  I had planned to spend some time this evening exploring a tiny section of the park off Highway 44.  It is essentially the bridge between the North Unit and South Unit of the park.  There are no pullouts or overlooks, but I was going to park on the side of the road and hike in to explore.  Unfortunately, they are doing some road construction on Highway 44.  The portion of the road that is now only one way, requiring the pilot car to take you through, is exactly the section I wanted to explore.  So, no joy there.  For Plan B, I continued on through and started from the far end of the Sage Creek Road, working my way back to the Pinnacles Area. 

There were quite a few bull Bison out and about, offering me some great opportunities for close ups as well as broad landscape and wildlife images.  They were all in various stages of trying to lose their winter coat.  It has been almost three weeks since our last snow out here, so I guess they figured they were safe.  It was interesting to be so close to them, as they were grazing I could hear them making this low grunting noise.  Then I heard something I have never heard before.  A large bull had been sitting on top of a rise for quite some time, but he stood up suddenly and stared straight ahead of him … right at another bull.  The second bull had been slowly walking straight at the sitting bull, and the second bull was starting to growl.  Or, at least, that is the closest I can describe the sound.  It was a low, rumbling, very intent growl, and it kept getting louder.  I thought for a second that the two were going to get into it.  I was prepared, at a safe distance with my 500mm and ready to go.  Unfortunately, the second bull stopped growling and backed off.

As I approached the Pinnacles area, I saw two ewe Bighorn sitting on a slope, providing an almost picture-perfect wildlife pose.  They were collared, which most of the Piannacles Bighorns are, but I still photographed them.  Even though they are being monitored, they are still wild.  And wildlife population monitoring is important in guaging the health of the particular population, understanding its habits.  I will try to get up early tomorrow and see if the weather will be right to set up my camera for another time lapse.  I really want to do one more, for a full 24 hours, before I leave.

Okay, so I will not be able to do a single-exposure star trails photo for the rest of the time I am here.  The moon is nearly full, and will be up pretty much all hours of night, rising in the late afternoon and setting just before dawn.  The light pollution produced from the moon was simply too much, even shooting a silhouetted formation.  It simply makes the sky too bright.  So, my next effort at star trails will actually be to take the images from my next and final attempt at a long-term time lapse.  With the bright moon, that will make it easier to get the right exposure for the nighttime portion of the time lapse to work, and I spent a good part of my midnight sojourn into the moonlight landscape to figure out those settings.

But, I figured, why not take advantage of the brightly-lit Badlands and get out there to produce some moonlit, starry landscapes.  Since the moon is merely shining reflected sunlight, I set my white balance at daylight, with ISO at 800, shooting my 24-85mm at its widest focal length, and wide open at f/2.8 for an 8-second exposure.  I wanted the shorter exposure time to minimize or eliminate star movement.  At 24mm, it woulud not be noticeable at 8 seconds, but it would be at 30 seconds.  So, I used the higher ISO setting to allow for the shorter exposure time.  I stuck to pretty much the pullouts between around Old NE Road and the Fossil Trail parking lot.  Here is a sample of what I captured in about an hour and a half.  Time for bed.  Sun comes up in less than four hours.

After almost a full day of clouds across the sky and flat light, all of a sudden the skies opened up a wall of water, and rays of beautiful light.  I was sitting in my apartment, doing some work on the computer and occasionally looking out at the gray skies, when all of a sudden I heard this loud noise starting first to build then reaching a crescendo.  I opened my front door and discovered that it was a solid, steady rain.  I looked out my back door and saw a bright rainbow.  The feature photo for this post is taken out my back door.

So, I grabbed the gear and started chasing the rainbow.  When that faded, I started to chase the clouds and the light.  Then the rainbow came back, and I photographed it in other locations.  In between being run around by the thunderstorm and its effect on the light, I worked to capture the general quality of light and the texture of the clouds.  It is simply so rare to see clouds like this in Anchorage, it is such a treat to see them and be able to photograph them here. 

Sometimes I have a plan, where I have a specific location where I will set up and wait to see what the light does at that particular location.  Other times, I go to where the light takes me.  This was definitely one of the latter type of evenings.  If I knew anything about emergency medicine, I would say this was somewhat like triage.  Only after the sun went down was I able to slow down a little, look more for compositions that spoke to me, rather than the compositions essentially throwing themselves at me.  Again, digital photography provided me the ability to explore those ranges of light beyond sundown.  Additionally, the digital camera allows me to take more accurate exposures with my Hassleblad.  After the sun goes down, a handheld incident light meter – my tool for setting the exposure manually on the Hassleblad – is pretty useless.  But, with my digital camera, I can discern the best exposure and then use those settings to correctly set the exposure in the Hasselblad.  The silhouetted tree, standing alone long after the sun went down but still with some light in the sky, was captured both with the digital and the film.  It will be interesting to see how they compare.

Now, I am off to see if I can attempt another star trails photo.  With the nearly full moon in the sky, it will be challenging.  But, I have an idea … we will see if it works.

Realizing that the light would not hit as early here as yesterday, I sleep in – 5:15 a.m.  I get up, get the gear together, then make breakfast while waiting for the sun to come up.  I look around and realize that the three groups of bison I saw yesterday have now seemed to form one large herd.  They are just on the other side of a large mound about a quarter of a mile from my location.  Although not on the way I need to go, I decide I will take a small detour to that hill and try to photograph them closer.  But, then the sun comes up and I go to work.  The formations on the far side of the wilderness area to the south are first to get the light, with my small formation to the north the last.  Again, it is a clear morning with nary a sign of clouds.

By 7:05, I have struck camp and am back on the trail, heading toward the Sage Creek Campground.  I do not detour to photograph the bison because they have moved on, and rather quickly at that.  I saw them start to move, then to pick up the pace, and it took me a while to understand why.  A couple of rather gutsy if not suicidal coyotes decided that they would try to get some action.  Or, maybe this is how young coyotes entertain themselves out in small pack Badlands.  Certainly a lot more exciting than tipping cows.  I stop a couple of times along the way to set up the tripod and photograph the Middle Fork of Sage Creek, which I will be following mostly on my way into the campground.  There is one particular bend with some rich pink and gold hues, much like the colors in the Yellow Mounds area.

Following the bearing I have chosen on my compass, and some mule deer and bison trails, I am within about two miles of the campground when a couple of unexpected things happen.  One happens as I am looking to my left at some bison with spring calves on a nearby hill.  I am making sure they are aware of me and are not interested in me, and I look back to the trail ahead of me to see two coyotes peering right at me.  They are probably about 150 feet away.  As I pull out my camera from my HoldSLR, they both take off, doing an about face and disappearing completely.  When I get to the point where they were standing, there is no sight of them.  The other thing happens about a hundred yards later when, as I am on the north side of the Middle Fork, I find what looks like the remains of an early twentieth century automobile, back when they were calling them horseless carriages.  The undercarriage looks odd, as well as the fenders.  One of the fenders has a symbol that I photograph.  But the key clue that this is something really old comes in the form of the seat for the contraption, which looks a lot like a modern bicycle seat, but solid metal.

Within a mile from the campground, I stop for a snack and to take a drink.  I notice after I have selected the spot that I am looking down on a rather large prairie dog town.  I don’t notice it at first visually – I actually thought it was probably a high volume area for bison since there was hardly any plants growing at all.  No, what clues me in is the various chattering going back and forth among the mounds.  After my snack, I pass through the town and notice that one of the prairie dogs must have picked a bad time to come out of his hole – a set of bones is scattered all around an opening.  I take some photos, and am then on my way to a small grassy hill, where I spook several groups of grouse.  Talk about a well-camouflaged bird; I could not see them at all until they flushed and headed out to the southwest.  But finally, I am on my final approach.  There is a hill I have been hiking toward for the last few miles, a hill I had decided was the last rise before the campground.  I am about to find out how accurate my navigational skills are.  I tell myself that when I get to the top of the hill, I should be able to see the campground off to the left, about a quarter of a mile away.  One of my key navigational aids I have been using is the aptly-named White Butte (funny, you cannot see the white part of it from the road, only from out in the wilderness area).

So, I get to the top of the hill and look down and to the left …. and see the campground right where it should be.  And, right in the middle of my path to the campground are two large bulls, hanging out in the open field.  Now, if I were a bison, with a thick, dark fur, I would sit under a nice juniper on a hot, sunny day.  But that’s just me.  I take a large arc around them, keeping an eye on them as one of them keeps an eye on me, then cross the creek – using the game trail that just so happens to cross in the shallow, gravel bar area.  I notice that someone is camping here, one tent, but no one is home – they must be on a day hike.  It is now 11:30, a full two and a half hours before my arranged pick up by one of the rangers.  I settle in at one of the sheltered picnic tables and give the ranger a call on the radio I have been carrying; he has actually just started his patrol and will be along shortly to pick me up.  The campers come back from their day hike, so I go over and make contact.  Having gone on a couple of backcountry ranger patrols in Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, first as an artist-in-residence then as a volunteer, I am accustomed to making contact with visitors to learn how their trip is going.  It is a man about my age and his son (I would guess his age at around 12).  They have been there for the weekend and are staying another night.  They seem to be enjoying the quiet that this part of the park has to offer.

My ranger, Greg, arrives and I hop in to come back and download.  Along the way he tells me about a call they received from a visitor about a sick bison.  Apparently, the bison was sitting on the ground and panting, said the visitor.  The call reminded me of a chapter in the book I am reading, and how people are sometimes clueless about wildlife.  It did not occur to the visitor that 2,000-pound animals with thick dark fur need to sit down and pant to cool off.  Along the way back to my Jeep, and all the way back to my apartment, there is simply an explosion of visitors, the most I have seen at the park yet.  The summer is on its way, but unfortunately, this residency is winding down.  Well, unfortunate from the artistic standpoint.  Not unfortunate in that soon I get to be back home with my wife, Michelle, whom I have missed incredibly on this trip.