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Concrete Bliss

This image was taken at Shiprock in northwest New Mexico. There's a great deal of climbing as well as folklore history tied to this 1583-foot monadnock. This is...
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This image was taken at Shiprock in northwest New Mexico. There's a great deal of climbing as well as folklore history tied to this 1583-foot monadnock. This is a single image with an exposure of 2.76 hours. Due to unruly winds any attempt to photograph a long enough sequence of images to produce a star trail was not possible. Knowing this, I hunkered down next to the wheel well of my car, took several 30 second test shots for composition, took one test image of about 40 minutes to gauge exposure settings, made several estimated corrections for a several hour shot and then patiently waited reading in my tent. The 2.76 hour time frame was chosen on whim based on the time at which I finished a chapter of my book. I had intended on shooting a 2.5 hour exposure but was to caught up in my fiction to climb out of the tent and finish the exposure right at 2.5 hours. Ironically the image was slightly over exposed.
Photographing long exposure images at night has always held a bit of magical fascination for me. The idea of photographing something that isn't visible to the naked eye stimulates a great deal of creativity and wonder. The countless obstacles and uncontrollable factors have the potential to frustrate photographers. However, for me the countless failures are only a dim memory to the excitement and joy I feel when an image such as this is produced.
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