Starry Night | Ben Coffman Photography

Your comfort zone isn’t helping your photography

The galactic core of the Milky Way makes its first appearance of the year over a frozen Lost Lake, Oregon.

I took this panorama in January of 2015, one of the earliest calendar year captures of the Milky Way’s galactic core I’ve made over the past 6 or 7 years, particularly in Oregon, where the winters are rainy and cloudy. A thin layer of ice covered Lost Lake, which was pretty exciting, because at the time I’d never really seen any night photos of Lost Lake in the winter (and this is still true to some degree). I’m glad that on this particular morning, I forced myself to get up at 1 am and make the drive.

Sometimes getting outside of your comfort zone is the best possible thing.

Doing things that aren’t particularly fun is often rewarding, purely because no one wants to do them. Very few of us are good at getting up at 1 am and gathering our photography gear, trekking out into the cold and unknown, and taking good technical photos in bad conditions.

But, looking back on this moment three years ago, I don’t remember my irritating alarm clock buzzing me awake. I don’t remember the long drive to the trailhead; I only remember that the drive was filled with uncertainty about how I would get to my destination. Was the road even going to be open? What if there was a tree down blocking the road? How far would I have to walk? What if there was a tree that fell down behind me, trapping me on the mountain?

Luckily, the journey up there wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. And despite the cold of that night, sitting in the dark and taking photos was actually pretty pleasant (mostly thanks to what feels like thousands of dollars spent on high-quality outdoor clothing). This isn’t always the case, of course.

Just last month I found myself moonless-night hiking on an ice and snow-slicked trail to get to a destination for a shoot that was a bust. I was by myself, and I had slipped a few times, stretching some muscles just a bit further than they were meant to be stretched at my age. I was out of my comfort zone: weighed down by equipment, sweating, unsure about predators and nervous. Just plain uncomfortable.

I guess my point is that it’s getting harder to create original nightscape photos, as more and more photographers enter the landscape astrophotography game (which I advocate for, by the way). It’s harder and harder to find and photograph unique landscape under unique conditions, to carve out a unique niche and to be your own photographer.

But it’s not impossible.

And it often starts with doing the things that no one else wants to do.

Do you have any questions or comments regarding this blog or the photo featured in it? Feel free to add a comment below!

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A night with an old friend

"Equilibrium," a whitebark pine hangs on the rim of Crater Lake by its roots, while the Milky Way spins overhead. — “Equilibrium,” a whitebark pine hangs on the rim of Crater Lake by its roots, while the Milky Way spins overhead; prints available here.

I took a physical geography class years ago, and the main thing I took away from it was that wind and water are the Earth’s primary erosive forces. And Crater Lake’s not lacking for either of them.

Crater Lake in summertime is very different than Crater Lake during any other season, mostly because the place is buried in snow from early fall through late spring (if not longer). To a certain extent, that snowy winter coat protects some of the native trees and plants. But the water resulting from 10 feet of snow melting can move a lot of soil around. Once the trees are unburied they’re subjected to Crater Lake’s infamous wind. When the wind gusts at over 30 mph, the top layer of that volcanic soil takes flight, and you can feel its sting against your shins (if you happen to be out there in shorts) or even your arms and face. In these harsh conditions, figuring out the reason why many of the rim’s whitebark pines have become denuded of their bark over time doesn’t take a lot of imagination.

Unfortunately, man’s presence further accelerates the process. We move soil (both inadvertently and on purpose), trample plants that would better secure the soil to the ground, and some of us will even climb on some of these ancient trees in order to get a good selfie. The phrase “loved to death” springs to mind, but I would never begrudge anyone the opportunity to experience Crater Lake’s beauty in the same ways that I have (although I’ve never climbed any trees in the park).

At some future point, this spot may be closed to the public so that restoration can take place. At some other future point, this tree will likely fall into the crater, a (hopefully) natural act that was to some degree partially hastened by my many trips to photograph the tree. And at some long future point, if diseases like blister rust and insects like the mountain pine beetle win out, whitebark pines on the rim of the lake will cease to exist at all.

These seem like slow-moving or outright invisible processes, but I’m always surprised at the changes I see in these trees year over year: an extra twist in the bark, a more-exposed root, a fracture in an exposed root that was likely caused by a human’s weight. It’s these little changes that motivate me to go check in with these old trees, my old friends, to see how they’re holding up. And in the process I take another photo and make another memory.

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The short wait for forever

Photography is not for the impatient. Even less forgiving for wait-haters is astrophotography, particular in the cloudy Pacific Northwest. Last winter I longed for new views of the galactic center of the Milky Way, but I had to wait a painfully long time before I could get back out and try out some new techniques (both in-field and in post-processing). Throughout the spring, banks of clouds stretching hundreds of miles wide would roll in with the new moon, frustrating stargazers and star photographers all over the region.

This year, I vowed to save a number of my Milky Way photos back for the winter of 2014/2015 so that I would have something to process. And then, months after this decision, I thought long and hard about my course of action. And then I asked myself: Why? What am I waiting for?

So yesterday I did what enjoy: I dug up some old files of the Milky Way and an abandoned house that I had photographed in May, processed them, and shared them with the world. And I drank some dark coffee (a whole pot of it, in fact). And I listened to music, probably too loudly. And I had fun doing it. Funny how that works.

Somewhere in the subtext here (as well as the title of the photo) is a lesson on waiting to do something you enjoy. I’ve chosen to live a life in which I express part of myself through photography, and these photos juxtaposing ancient stars and not-nearly-as-ancient homesteads make me think (and feel) deeply about the permanence of the things we humans build in our environment, the transitory objects we think of as durable and long-lasting. Stargazing (even if its via a photo) affords us a rare opportunity to reflect on our tiny place in an impossibly giant universe.

Anyhow, in the interest of learning more about this section of the sky, I’ve also included a labeled version of the photo for your perusal. Click on it to make it large. Enjoy!

An abandoned house sits beneath the Milky Way in rural Oregon. — An annotated version of the same photo.

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Photographing Palouse Falls at night, a second-person essay

Your phone’s alarm clock jolts you awake. Your back aches, but you finally slept well for about an hour and a half, anyway.

You sit up, turn the alarm off, and put the phone in your right cargo pocket of your pants. It’s dark and finally quiet, save for the gusting winds gently rocking your car. Your mind clears, and your heart rate jumps. It’s time to shoot the stars.

You pick up your wallet and put it in your back pocket; your flashlight goes in your left cargo pocket; your keys go in your right-front zipper pocket; your headlamp goes around your neck. Everything’s organized, sequenced; you’ve done this routine dozens of time and can do it with your eyes half closed, in the dark. You open the car’s back door to put on your shoes and step out into the gravel parking lot. Cold air rushes in, defogging the windows. The dome light on your car doesn’t come on–you turned it off a couple of years ago to help save your night vision.

Upward, the sky’s filled end to end with gleaming stars. You take a brief second to admire them, and refocus. You put on your long-sleeve shirt. You pick up your trusty 15-year-old wool sweater that you were using as a pillow and put that on too. You throw on your jacket, which has your shutter release in the right pocket, gloves thin enough to work your camera’s controls in the left pocket. You put on your neck gaiter and stocking hat and slide your headlamp up from around your neck onto your head, over the stocking hat. The headlamp’s still off–you’re still trying to save your night vision, always trying to work in the dark as much as possible.

You grab your backpack and tripod, close the back door of the car, and beep it locked with a twinge of guilt at possibly disturbing campers who were keeping you awake just a few hours earlier.

You start hiking. Quickly the terrain goes from safe and well-traveled to right along the edge of a gaping canyon. Below you–maybe 100 feet–is a 200-foot waterfall flowing at its spring rate–a high volume. The waterfall’s roar blots out every other noise in the night. The white noise of waterfalls and wind occupies nearly all of your senses; your eyes see only basic shapes in the blue-black geography around you land and pinhole lights in the sky. Cold creeps into your body at your extremities.

You can feel a small rumble beneath your feet. You set your tripod down, and as you release your grip you can feel it humming. You inch closer to the edge of the cliff, thinking about the crumbling piles of basalt several hundred feet below. You wonder about how long ago they fell. Two thousand years? One hundred fifty years? Five years? News reports of recent earthquakes in southern California and Mt Hood flash into your brain. You wonder how long the rock below your feet would stay put if the earth started to shake.

You look through your eyepiece; because you’re shooting with a wide lens, the edge of the cliff is in the bottom of your frame. You need to move closer. You turn on your headlamp (there goes your night vision, but you’re not going to risk getting any closer in the darkness), double-check the edge of the cliff again, take a deep breath, and move your tripod as close to the edge as possible. Holding onto your tripod with your left hand so that it doesn’t fall off the cliff, you carefully check the bubble level to make sure its level.

You turn your head lamp off and vow to not take a single step–certainly not a step forward, but also not to the left or directly behind you, where the ground falls away to a large crack, and then, of course, a long tumble.

You aren’t prone to vertigo, but your head swims in the pitch darkness. You can’t escape the feeling that you’re floating in space. The ground is a flat, detail-less black. You renew your vow not to take a single step, to keep your feet planted exactly where they are. Don’t… move…

You line up the shot–your eyes have adjusted, thankfully, and you can just barely differentiate the deep black of the canyon from the not-quite-as-deep black of the horizon.

You trip the shutter, in the dark, alone, and start counting along with the timer…one…two…three…

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Before dawn’s first light at Crater Lake

Getting There

This photo, like all of my images that I took this night, was from the Crater Lake’s west rim. I and my friends Jack (of Jack Crocker photography–check him out) and Robyn Clipfell (of Clipfell Photography–check her out as well) hefted heavy packs and snowshoed a little over 3 miles from the Rim Village to a site just a bit south of The Watchman, the giant peak on Crater Lake’s west side.

Getting the Shot

This photo was taken at 4:56 am, just 12 minutes after I had taken the final photograph for my panorama, and it’s a fantastic example of how important dark skies are in capturing the Milky Way. Cameras and lenses? Both very important. But the MOST important aspect of lotsa-stars-Milky-Way-photography is a super-dark sky.

I knew from checking the Internet that the sun was going to rise at about 6:30, and I knew from experience that the sky begins to lighten in the east about 2 hours before the sun is visible. So when I started shooting my panorama of Crater Lake at about 4:17, I wanted to make sure that I got my east-facing shots first, since that area of the sky would begin to lighten first, thus drowning out the Milky Way. Luckily, I just barely got my panorama photos taken in time. (Yes, it actually took me a long, freezing half hour to take those photos.)

Twelve minutes later I took this photo, the last of my “night” photos. The stars disappeared pretty rapidly after that.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I’d also captured the comet PANSTARRS in my photo. An eagle-eyed reader on my facebook page alerted me to this fact. In the images below, the arrow points to a very, very small PANSTARRS, complete with tail.

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Star trails over Yosemite Falls

Getting There

There’s no secret to this location–this is upper Yosemite Falls, right in the Yosemite Valley of Yosemite National Park. If for some reason “see Yosemite before I die” isn’t written on a piece of paper in your possession, you should probably change that. The park was incredible.

Getting the Shot

This is 35 exposures (25 seconds at f/6.3, ISO 1250, 22mm, shot on my Canon 17-40) stacked in Starstax (gap-filling mode). I highly recommend this free software, available online. Stacking shorter images (rather than taking one longer image) has several advantages, including less noise in the final image and the ability to remove a frame or two if something bad unexpected occurs (such as airplanes, car headlights, etc) during your exposures.

Basically, I pulled up next to this meadow at about 11 pm, set up my camera, took a few test shots to check my composition and my settings, double-checked my focus, and then I set my intervalometer to take 50 exposures. Then I walked back to my car, kicked back the driver’s seat, and tried to enjoy a short nap. About 10 minutes in, someone pulled up behind my car and sprayed the entire meadow with their headlights, disturbing my nap. I ended up tossing that exposure in the trash. After about 30 shots, a blanket of high clouds moved in, eventually covering the sky (and shifting my white balance, which was set to auto). I threw away many of those frames as well.

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“Sentries of the white city”

Yikes! I totally forgot to mention this thing that’s totally worth mentioning: Last month, my photo “Sentries of the white city” was selected by Oregon photography business Pro Photo Supply as the winner of their monthly photography contest. The theme was “snow.”

A brief interview and the image can be found here. In the interview, I mention a little about the process of taking the photo.