Desert Camping - a photo on Flickriver

Desert Camping

            This was a perfect example of over-preparation going wrong. I planned this camping trip in order to align everything to capture the Milky Way and some star trails for the first time. I picked a desert in Colombia pretty away from light pollution, reviewed thoroughly the ‘Plan it!’, the ‘Photographers ephemeris’ and weather apps to select my approximate camping site, and went on a new moon.

This part in Colombia is going through an unusual dry streak (‘El Niño’ phenomenon), which was confirmed by locals as soon as I arrived: The desert hadn’t seen a drop of rain in eight months! That guaranteed me a clear sky and perfect shooting conditions, right? Wrong… My photography gear was like a rain charm. At the moment my tripod touched the ground at the evening in preparation for the sunset, the clouds started to cover absolutely everything. And not only that, far in the horizon a nasty storm started to form, and the weather predictions changed rapidly and didn’t have promising news for the night. Since I (wrongfully) chose the camping site with rain far away from my mind, the tent was set on an area very prone to flooding (or at least get really muddy), so I had to pick my stuff and search for higher ground.

The storm went on with intermittent heavy rain, and obviously neither the stars nor the Milky Way appeared. When I had the chance I went outside the tent in the middle of the night and try some shots.

On the technical side, I’m still disappointed on how my camera is handling low light. The details are not acceptable at 100%, compared with I have seen in pictures at higher ISO. Perhaps it’s time to upgrade the lens. Besides, now I can live with grain. It can be nice. But the insanely amount of hot pixels is dreadful and a bummer during review (. I have never seen a case this worse, and I’m not sure if it’s normal for a 5 mins exposure 1.000 ISO for a D750 shouldn’t push its capabilities too far, right?) and if it’s worth to send my camera to service for this. The only way to save the images is converting them to B&W. If not, it will take me a lifetime to clone out all of them. Probably later I will be posting a color version to show what I’m talking about. Still, I loved how the clouds turned out and some of the vastness feeling. The negative space works well.

As always, comments, critiques and tips are welcome and will be highly appreciated.

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Taken in: Colombia / Huila / Las Margaritas Hacienda (show map)

Taken on: October 10, 2015

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Camping

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Commons

D750

Desert

Fall

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Tatacoa

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Camera: Nikon D750, f/3.5, 298 sec, 14mm, ISO 1000 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D750
Aperture:	f/3.5
Exposure Time:	298
Focal Length:	14mm
ISO:	1000
Color Space:	sRGB
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