Release the shutter

I had always loved seeing the milky way with my own eyes. I remember when I was working for the summer up in this valley on certain nights it was almost as if you could reach out and grab it with your hands. Fast forward quite a lot of years and I developed a healthy passion for photography. I had never taken any milky way photos before so I read up on the subject. What shutter speed is recommended? What iso is acceptable to not introduce a massive amount of noise to the picture? Are my lens fast enough to capture the galaxy? They are normal lenses so I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to capture anything when I made the trip to Jelm, Wyoming. I knew there was an observatory up there so if the scientists put a whole bubble with massive glass in that location it must be prime right? It was about an hour and a half drive from my house in Colorado but I googled when the best times were to see the milky way. Finding the new moon the best time for astrophotography I planned the trip a few days prior and said even if it’s cloudy I’m going to attempt to go capture some of the beauty. I don’t think my photos are stellar as I am just learning how to frame the picture with lakes or trees but I think they turned out okay enough for the first time. Some help if anyone is wondering how to capture the stars. Take the number 500 and divide it by the focal length of your lens. A 50mm lens should have no more than a 10 second exposure time or shutter speed. I tried so many lenses as this was the only day there would be a new moon for a while so I wanted to try to capture everything I could in one shot. I loaded up the dogs and started the trip north from Colorado. I wanted to get up there much earlier than I did to scout out the best location to capture some landscape and the stars but didn’t quite make it out of the house soon enough. I knew the area a little bit from working there so I figured I could find a spot easy enough. I bought a good tripod a few years back so I made sure to pack that. With longer exposure times stability of the camera is crucial to a good frame. I saw an old barn on the side of the road and had to stop at sunset to capture what I could. After all, I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of pictures on the way up if any and I was mostly making the trip to see / photograph the stars / milky way.

I didn’t post this one but I still liked it. I didn’t like the tree in the right side of the picture for some reason. It took away from the fact that i wanted it to look like this old barn was out in the middle of the plains. The old cattle chute from what I would imagine is the 70’s or 80’s sitting there next to the barn. I would imagine thousands of cattle have been through this little corral / barn setup. Now that I have snapped a few pictures of something neat I needed to continue my trip up to the Laramie River Valley. The cell phone service drops off after about 10 minutes of driving west of where this little barn is. That was one interesting thing about the ranch I worked at in college. There was zero cell service the whole valley was on the party line system. If someone was using the phone in the valley you had to wait your turn to use it. It made for an interesting communication situation with back home but I wouldn’t trade that summer it was a once in a lifetime summer. The ranch owners were very kind and I loved all of my coworkers. Driving past Woods Landing to the Wyoming side of the valley a rush of memories came back to me.

This spot is a very cool one if anyone gets to visit. I just captured the gas station but the cafe next door is log cabin style and is built on top of old railroad car box springs. This helps cushion the dance floor when there is a crowd in there. The term woods landing comes from I think back in the late 1800’s when they would cut the lodgepole pines and float them down the Laramie River and their main takeout was here. Hence the term Woods Landing. I took this photo on the way out of the valley as I was eager to get set up I didn’t want to miss the Milky Way. Once I got my position picked out I looked back at Jelm Mountain where the observatory was. I could see two or three sets of headlights up there. I imagine some others from the area had the same idea as I did for the new moon. I didn’t snap any pictures of the headlights on the mountain maybe I should have but it would have just been a couple bright spots on the side of a distant hill. I got the tripod set up in what I thought was a decent spot to get some of the valley and the galaxy. That first picture was taken with the Leica SL2S with a shutter speed of 15 seconds and a 35mm Voigtlander f1.2 lens and an iso setting of 800. Im not upset on how the picture came out but I would have liked to figure out how to make the ground more of part of the picture or the landscape. I think next time I will get closer to something on the ground like the river maybe. Now that I know I can be lower and not required to be on top of a hill I can get more creative.

I thought I saw a shooting star during this frame but didn’t realize I would catch two. I’m sure thats quite commonplace with longer shutter speeds but I was excited to see it when I edited it nonetheless. This was taken on a Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 50mm f1.8 / 15 second shutter speed (I broke my rule here to see what happened) at an iso of 800. This was one of my favorite shots of the night. I proceeded through the bag of lenses I bought using a 28mm zeiss distagon / 40mm voigtlander f1.4 / 50mm voigtlander f1.0 / summitar 5cm f1.4. They all turned out alright i didn’t hate any of them but I learned a lot. I would move the camera direction around the sky and would miss the galaxy sometimes but that was okay. I released the shutter. One thing I did use that helped to stabilize the camera was a remote shutter release button. I found a deal on mine from one of the photography websites. It is a Leica RC-SCL6 model. They sell for $200 on various sites but I found mine for $40. It just helps to keep your hand off of the camera when it starts its process. Any bump when at that slow of a speed shutter wise can blur the image.

These can be found for cheap anywhere you look for your specific camera.

In editing photos the colors are there it’s just how you choose to express them. I mostly try to be subtle with my edits but this one looks nice. I wanted to show this one because you can see the moment the plane was in the frame. That is the valley I wanted to capture but I couldn’t get it as clean as I wanted.

This snow fence was on the way out. I didn’t feel like I found anything to put in the picture besides the stars and muddled landscapes so I tried something different here. It didn’t turn out horrible but I think I will do much better next time with framing the shot. I still released the shutter. It’s digital its easy compared to the guys that use film.

I stopped at woods landing and captured the above image on my way out of the valley after fighting a few moths out of the Land Rover on the way there. The drive to town is about 35 minutes and rife with deer and possibly moose so I took my time and watched out for furry buddies. I didn’t even have an idea where I would find stuff to shoot in Laramie even though I have spent my fair share of time in town. Night time photography is difficult in you have to have lights for the most part to capture something. I noticed this butcher block sign lit up an extraordinary amount on the way to the valley so I had planned on stopping back here on the way back through.

This sign was almost too bright to capture anything. I had to reduce the highlights quite a bit to be able to read the sign and it not be just a big blare of light. I like how it turned out though there are some nice colors there. I think that sign is fairly new I don’t remember it being that nice the last time I came through town.

If there was a setting I didn’t know what to do with this night it would be this one. There is so much going on. I feel like if the liquor / fly shop sign was a bit closer to the store it would be easier but it was difficult to figure out how to get all of the aspects into frame without including a lot of the street and the big void between the store and the sign. Maybe I will learn in the future not to do that to just pass on it or take them as two stand alone pictures. I still released the shutter.

This was directly across the street from the fly shop I just didn’t think there was anything really interesting about the picture. That or I just didn’t know how to frame it. It doesn’t hurt my feelings to have a picture come out bad it’s going to happen. I can’t overthink it. I always did the best on tests when I just sped through and answered the questions and didn’t second guess them. I think I will stick with that mantra with my photography. It’s digital I can just delete it later. After spending a few minutes getting these in West Laramie I headed into town to the main drag. Once again I had no plan just cruised around a bit to let the dogs smell until I spotted something. I had been to the Ranger bar there in town a time or two but that was it. I noticed the hotel / bar sign lit up and figured I should take a stab at catching something there.

Someone on the lightroom community edited out the left side of the frame which I completely understand why. I liked the glare of the neon on the second floor. This is one of the few times I photographed someone in a picture like this. Buddy was so buried in his phone that I’m not even sure he realized I was there. I don’t hate this picture its got some nice colors.

This capture was just something I chose to post because it shows a tree that tried so hard to survive and it wasn’t able to overcome the odds. The construction sign isn’t directly responsible for its downfall but it is more of a metaphor than anything else. Trees rely on their roots for their life and this ones got strangled by compaction most likely. The buzz cut didn’t help it either.

This was one of my favorite spots of the night. I don’t remember this spot exactly when I lived here but it was a nice surprise. I imagine the workings have been modernized but the overall look is super retro. As I got out of the car a fella rolled pretty close by with an e bike and noticed me taking pictures. I thought he may have had ill intentions but I think he realized I had a camera and he zoomed off like i was going to arrest him. I guess I’ll never know. This was a successful trip for finding cool stuff. I hope to get up to Estes Park this week to get some stuff taken. Stay tuned for more. Until next time friends, release the shutter.

Kyle