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Just gone 2.30am and I'm wide awake having arrived in Colorado, U.S.A. two days previously from the UK, and my head clock is telling me it's 9.30am.
So what to do? Well the obvious answer (to my mind anyway) is to get up and go photograph the stars.
Liz and I were staying in Estes Park, right on the edge of the wonderful Rocky Mountains National Park, and I couldn't imagine a better place to be photographing stars from.
At between 8,000 and 12,000 feet above sea level, the air is crystal clear and dry, and with no significant human activity in the park the light pollution levels are very low.
Add those factors to a new moon and you've got the perfect mix for some fantastic star action.
So three quarters of an hour later I was standing by the side of Sprague Lake, being really greedy and hoping for the milky way to be reflected in the still, calm waters.
But that was not to be, with a gentle breeze ruffling the surface of the lake just enough to rule out a reflection of the stars.
Never mind though, as the area around where I was standing featured some nice looking pine trees, so i framed up and started shooting stills for my time lapse sequence showing the milky way passing over those trees.
In the end I shot a total of over 500 stills to make the Rocky Mountain Stars Time Lapse video, only stopping once the approaching sunrise blotted the stars from the sky.
This still was one of the earler ones, while the sky was still fully dark and cloud free.
Filename - rocky mountain milky way 01.jpg
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 14mm prime
Exposure - 15 secs @ f2.8, ISO6400
Location - Sprague Lake, Rocky Mountains, Colorado, U.S.A.
This image - 800x450px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - Still taken as part of time lapse sequence.
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