Matera is a small city in southern Italy, near the top of Italy’s boot heel. Its claims to fame are its cave dwellings or sassi, which were named UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1993. With its striking chalk-colored rock walls and winding stairways, the city was a perfect photographic point of interest for me on a whirlwind tour of southern Italy in 2016.
Because of the modern-day wonder of AirBNB, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to stay in a sasso. Yes, I used a website to stay in a cave.
Of course, when you stay in a cave you have to make some concessions, with one of the main ones being that we had to park our rental car about half a mile away from our lodging and schlep our belongings down Matera’s maze-like stone stairways, but even that was a fun adventure.
That night, unencumbered by our suitcases (which we left in our modernly furnished cave) we took a quick hike across a small but steep canyon cut by the Gravina River to the other side, where we watched the sun set. The scene was amazing. The heavenly voice of a children’s choir, from a weekend concert somewhere in town, filtered through the city and reverberated over the valley, creating an eery but magical scene as slowly the city lights turned on and the sun continued to sink below the horizon.
“Matera twilight cityscape,” a low light panorama sweeping over a UNESCO World Heritage Site, summer of 2016. Click to view full size. Prints and licensing available. Contact me for details.
Technical details: This panorama was taken with my Fuji Xpro-1 and a Rokinon 12mm f/2 lens, with a fairly significant crop to deal with the relative width of the lens. The final cropped pano size was 7,807 x 2,602 pixels.
On March 26th (2018), I had finished my short trip to the Baja peninsula and was spending the night camping near Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The sky was incredibly clear, totally free of clouds, so I had skipped shooting sunset and was instead exploring around my campsite looking for good compositions for shooting the Milky Way later that night.
However, while walking around in the twilight, I noticed that something strange was happening on the western horizon. Venus was glowing brightly—along with a number of strangely colored clouds. The sight was really pretty stunning, and I immediately got excited and ran to get my camera equipment. I had never seen noctilucent clouds before, and I had also never seen iridescent clouds before. Somehow, interestingly, these seemed to be both, and I couldn’t recall having ever heard of that phenomenon.
For the next hour or so I shot various photos, scrambling to find a foreground without missing the show. As it turned out, I could’ve spent a little more time looking for compositions, since the clouds were readily apparent for about an hour, but I didn’t know that at the time (and I’m pretty happy with the compositions I did find).
My first photo was taken at around 7:31 pm, about 44 minutes after sunset (which was at 6:47 pm on March 26th), during nautical twilight.
The planet Venus is low on the horizon while strange noctilucent, iridescent clouds swirl over the Arizona desert. Click to view full size. Contact me for prints or licensing opportunities.
This second photo was taken almost 10 minutes later, with a slightly different composition. This was taken at the end of nautical twilight.
The planet Venus is low on the horizon while strange noctilucent, iridescent clouds swirl over the Arizona desert. Click to view full size. Contact me for prints or licensing opportunities.
This third photo, a panorama, was taken at about 7:57 pm, over a full hour after sunset. Taken with a higher ISO, you can see a number of stars that have emerged during astronomical twilight. Additionally, the strange noctilucent iridescent clouds have settled lower onto the horizon.
The planet Venus is low on the horizon while strange noctilucent, iridescent clouds swirl over the Arizona desert. Click to view full size. Contact me for prints or licensing opportunities.
Have you ever seen anything like this before? Do you have any insights?
I’ll continue to add to this blog post as I find out more about these clouds. In the meantime, please feel free to share this post by using the buttons below.
UPDATE
Since first posting this I found this article in the Washington Post, which states that the clouds likely came from the exhaust of two Trident missiles launched from the Pacific Test Range, off the coast of Southern California.
Welcome to the Profitis Ilias Chapel, on Milos, a Greek Island in the Cyclades. I had scouted this location during the day, which required skirting a farmer’s field, passing by some crumbling stone walls, and then hiking nearly straight up the side of a hill that overlooked the large bay in the center of the U-shaped island. The trail was overgrown and, well, let’s just be real for a moment—scratchy. The trail was scratchy, and it scratched my legs all up.
When I came back that night, it was much cooler and much buggier, but equally as scratchy. The previously unoccupied field was now occupied by a Greek farmer shepherding a fairly large herd of goats across the trail. Although I tried to keep my distance, the farmer didn’t look too happy about me deciding to visit the chapel beyond the bounds of daylight. Or maybe he was worried that I was going to spook his goats. Or maybe he was considering whether he’d have pork or chicken souvlaki for dinner, I honestly couldn’t really read his facial expression or body language that well in the dark.
Once I got past the goat herd and herder, I headed back up the hill to the chapel. I spent about an hour up there taking photos. For being on such a high promontory (by this island’s standards, anyway), the air was still and calm, just a slight cool breeze to make the mosquitoes work for their meal.
If I stood on the cool whitewashed barrier and threw myself off of it, down the hill, I’d eventually end up not far from where the Venus de Milo was discovered in 1820, by a local farmer. If I continued rolling down that hill, I’d eventually come to rest at an old Roman amphitheater that’s in the process of being restored. It was, and still is, a magnificent venue with an incredible panoramic view of the bay behind the main stage. In fact, the whole island was littered with Roman ruins. If you look carefully on the right side of the photo, you can see half a dozen whitewashed Roman columns just lying around. One of the columns was built into the church, on the left side of the door. On the back side of the chapel you can see evidence of how a fallen column was used as the base of the church.
In the present day, if I continued going downhill from the Roman amphitheater, which was below where the Venus de Milo was found, which was below this tiny chapel on a hill, I’d get to a small village that hosted at least half a dozen barking dogs. This village is just barely visible on the far left side of the photo, and you can see a bunch of anchored boats floating in the harbor by it. This tiny village built by the bay had about half a dozen syrma in it, colorful little boat garages built right next to the water. As idyllic as that scene is, I wouldn’t want to live there, because seemingly half the town’s residents are dogs that bark all night.
Behind and to the right of the chapel, you can see Plaka, or Milos’ old town. This is ground zero for the island’s nightly traffic jam, which occurs when people try to drive into the old town, only to realize that the streets are too narrow to allow for cars and that all the nearby parking is full.
About an hour past sunset, the large LED panel that lights the outside of the chapel turns on. It’s solar powered, and its battery is likely fully charged after a day spent in the hot sun. On the inside of the chapel, both day and night, candles burn.
The Profitis Ilias Chapel on the Greek island of Milos sits beneath clear skies at twilight. Click for a larger view. Prints available (use the contact me form). Licensing available here.
I don’t often get an opportunity to photograph Oregon’s beautiful southern coast, so when my crowded schedule cleared a bit earlier this week I seized the moment and made the long drive. Known for its numerous state parks and its indefatigable sea stacks, the southern Oregon coast is a seascape photographer’s playground.
During the light of day, the dirt trails that cut through Samuel Boardman State Park are safe enough, if you pick your route carefully, can avoid tripping over exposed tree roots, and have shoes with good enough grip to avoid dirt-skiing down a hill and launching into the churning ocean.
But as is often the case, at night the coast’s hidden coves and thickly wooded trails turn inky black and shadows become impenetrable. The speed of foot travel becomes highly dependent upon the luminosity of your headlamp, and some scrambling, including climbing ladder-like tree roots upward, is required. And if you’re like me, occasionally, when you shut off your headlamp and wait for your camera’s long exposure, you’ll wobble and gyrate in the dark, feet rooted in place to ensure that you don’t take an ill-fated step in the wrong direction in an effort to check your balance.
In other words, this isn’t a place to visit with someone you even remotely suspect of harboring a grudge against you. Luckily for me, I was joined by Matt Newman, a talented southern Oregon photographer who had a little more experience with Samuel Boardman’s trails than I had and was willing to show me around a bit.
Technical details:
This is a blend of three images all taken in low-light conditions. The first was a very long exposure taken half an hour post-sunset with a neutral density filter to ensure that a certain amount of natural long-exposure saturation occurred in the twilight sky. The second was taken just a few minutes later without an ND filter to ensure that some of the darker areas of the photo had adequate shadow detail. The third exposure was taken just for the stars.
Breaking waves sound like thunder as the sun sets on a misty evening in Oregon’s Samuel Boardman State Park. Click the photo for full size. Prints available here.
