As I rest up from our Excursion to Big Bend, Texas and my body settles back into the norm after over 25 miles of hiking in five days, ( I know that seems mild to the young marathon hikers ) I feel that yearn for the next trip to the place I have not been to before, but since it’s time to mount up again and replant into reality, I will be fulfilled by looking at the images created from our trip.

 

 

 Our plans for this trip started back in the summer, we have about a two week window that both of our business are slow., so we chose to load up the day after family Christmas party and spend Christmas in the mountains of Big Bend, Texas. The trip did not disappoint in the slightest, we had six amazing sunsets and sunrises in which to capture the beauty of the area. The first night the temperature was in the low 30s in the morning and warmed up to the 60s, the rest of the week was low 50s at night and hives during the day perfect T-shirt weather!  There was a heavy dew and fog rising up from anything that had water in it so I’m so glad that I took the time to shoot the little cemetery that first morning, started the day off with a bang!  In my experience, if you’re going to a place you haven’t been before, why not be a tourist on the first day and soak up the knowledge of somebody who has been there most of their life. We took a jeep tour on the first day and hit all the high spots at the expense of the jeep tours vehicle. From there we formulated our plan somewhat anyway and next week we visited and hiked in Mule Ears, Castolon, Solo Este, Ros Memorial Drive, Presidio Drive, Ghost Town Cemetery  outside of Terilinga, Balanced Rock, Lost mine Trail and Ernst Tinja. The plan was to reconnect with our spiritual photography core, so, sunsets and painting with light became Our moteif, Generally the sunsets lasted for four hours getting there early enough to set up and shoot all the way through. The sunrise shot we done at Mule ears, started at 5:30 and finished about 10. This was an amazing hike, for the first hour was just about changing locations along the trail to capture the amazing colors in the eastern sky, the rest of it was a gentle hike to the base of the stone monument that stood proud and monumental. The major thing we learned, is not to get in a hurry and try to see too much, be there early and stay late. Being there early for a sunset sometimes meant getting there at 4:30 just depending on the location.

 

 

 Although in a dark sky community, Maverick campground held beautiful views at night and in the morning but not really the right time of year for startrail’s as they tend to be more predominant in the summer, so we used our energy instead on the sunrises and sunsets.

The techniques.

Most of the Sunset Shots I would set up two cameras, one for HDR at five exposures at two stops each and the other I was working on Light trails and dialing in the perfect exposure, I don’t remember the last time I carried tripods this much, but if I am going to use one, I want it to be rock solid. For this task I use the 10X Gitzo  and a RRS ball head.  For the HDR which creates a very large file I chose the Nikon D6 and for the light trails and other long exposures I chose the Nikon D850 for its pixel size.  I chose the Nikon 24-70s for vertical panos and the Nikon 14-24 s for light trails and light painting. Kept the ISO low to reduce grain, the aperture hi to ensure depth of field which meant long exposures. I always like to include something in the foreground and not just a blank sunset to give essence of place, not that a sunset is not  a miracle every time it happens but, to add that to the same, there needs to be something highlighted in the foreground.  Everything we shot was on raw for maximum size file and more control in post, so my total take was 110 GB, take lots of memory cards. We use the process called painting with light which consisted of a headlamp and a flashlight that we would paint the light where we wanted it on the subject in the foreground by presetting the camera for the available light, the result….

 

 

Physical

With hikes averaging 6 miles a day across boulders and up cliffs it’s not for the faint of heart, for my 15-year-old son this was like a walk in the park, but for an old guy carrying 40 pounds of gear everywhere he went, it was a little exhausting. 6 miles don’t sound like much but when you add in the factor of photographing all along the way and getting in precarious positions it can make for a pretty intense day, it will definitely keep you on your own side of the bed at night! We tried to balance out the hiking with some driving during the middle of the day to continue scouting locations around the Big Bend National park such as the drive to Presidio which was one of the most beautiful and amazing visuals ever even in the middle of the day!

 

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Backing it up!

Old habits die hard, and that’s a good thing sometimes, such as backing up all of your images from the day. We were shooting on raw so we ate upa lot of space, every night after the shoot while Lisa was preparing dinner I would back up both of our files onto multiple hard drives so that we would get back with all the images on one hard drive or the other, remember it’s not if they’re going to fail it’s when they fail.

All in all, I consider our trip a major success other than a old knee injury that it did not agree with, Lisa, Ray and I came back full in mind and spirit!

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