192 California HWY 395 – Photographs Of Comet Neowise – Editing Imnaha River Canyon Photos
If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work, or a podcast interview, please drop me an email. Drop Billy Newman an email here.
If you want to book a wedding photography package, or a family portrait session, please visit GoldenHourWedding.com or you can email the Golden Hour Wedding booking manager here.
If you want to look at my photography, my current portfolio is here.
If you want to purchase stock images by Billy Newman, my current Stock photo library is here.
If you want to learn more about the work Billy is doing as an Oregon outdoor travel guide, you can find resources on GoldenHourExperience.com.
If you want to listen to the Archeoastronomy research podcast created by Billy Newman, you can listen to the Night Sky Podcast here.
If you want to read a free PDF eBook written by Billy Newman about film photography: you can download Working With Film here. Yours free.
Want to hear from me more often?Subscribe to the Billy Newman Photo Podcast on Apple Podcasts here.
If you get value out of the photography content I produce, consider making a sustaining value for value financial contribution, Visit the Support Page here.
You can find my latest photo books all on Amazon here.
Website Billy Newman Photo https://billynewmanphoto.com/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/billynewmanphoto
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/billynewmanphotos/
Twitter https://twitter.com/billynewman
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/billynewman/
About https://billynewmanphoto.com/about/
0:14
Hello and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast.
0:23
Today with another photograph This image was taken in 2012 during late November I think this is after we left Yosemite we traveled North again and then cut over to Carson City Nevada where we jumped on the 395 now that next day we traveled south on the 395 trying to get to Bishop California I think that’s where this photograph was taken we pulled the camera over to take some photos, some photos of the the light that was in the sky in the afternoon sun that was those lighting up some of the clouds over this, this mountain this hill that was there that had no trees, I thought that was really cool. And so from this perspective, I turned and I looked back down toward the freeway or something toward the highway which you can see in the photo and then you can see just a little speck of where the camera is as you look out to those snow capped hills that are out there. It was just kind of a cool spot to get some photographs but I think this was in the higher elevations and then soon after this you start to come over that ridge come down and I think that’s where you get into like mana lake and and you get into some of those other areas and in the 395 but that was really cool. hadn’t thought through that that area, and Eastern California really interesting, remote area of land that it seems like a lot of Californians might not be too familiar with. It’s got a cool area though really glad to get a chance to be out here and
1:43
photograph it.
1:44
So thanks for checking it out. You can see more of my work at Billy Newman photo comm you can check out some of my photo books on Amazon. And then you can look at Billy Newman under the authors section there and see some of the photo books on film on the desert, on surrealism on camping and cool stuff over there and wanted to jump into a couple of the things I’ve been doing through the month of July and some of the outdoor camping and travel stuff I’ve been up to was gonna run down some of that in this podcast today I wanted to talk about a trip I did out toward Eastern Oregon I think like last week before last is when I was out in this area and I was trying to get some good observations in for comet neowise I’m not sure if any of you guys got to check that out while it was in its prime viewing section there I think that was why we had kind of like the new moon before it switched over to being gibbous moon or nearly full moon like it’s been the last week or so but I think was it around like the 15th through the 25th or so of July there’s some pretty good observations to be made of comet neowise and I guess after after kind of reading about it a little bit it’s not considered a great comment like Hale Bopp was or I think it was was I talkie in 1996 we haven’t had a great comment in a long time I’ve ever seen those when I was a kid though that was pretty cool like watching halbach come through for it seemed like three months or something you know that you were just kind of looking at that in the in the low corners of the northwestern and Western skies was kind of cruising across the skyline I remember that still from from like third fourth grade when it was coming through and I also remember the year before that when when like straight up in the air like straight up in the sky at night for like a week or so I was a kid you know but I remember it for that week you can see a real bright two tailed comet those guns were I think I can’t remember how to pronounce I think his height Taki or I think it’s some it’s some Japanese name pretty sure but that was a really cool one that one I still remember really clearly I was only like I don’t know seven or something when that like when when that comic came through but I really appreciate you getting to make some observations without one one as a kid. I missed Halley’s Comet though back in what 87 I think was the last one it It came through and I probably will be the few years that you know that decade or two of age range that doesn’t get to see Halley’s Comet in their lifetime so i think i think i was born in 88 of course so if I make it past 100 maybe I’ll see it what is it maybe like 80 something years so it’s probably not going to come back around until I think it’s like the 2017 or 2000 80s that I’d have to make it to for to see Halley’s Comet again. It’d be fine but I don’t know maybe we’ll see our future. The future is at that time. But it was really cool to get to see comet Neo wise it was just a little below What would be the legs and feet of Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, or like the big bear as it would kind of be observed, but if you kind of look at the deeper part that we’re all, mostly familiar with, if you kind of consider Ursa Major, the larger bear constellation that it’s structured on, if you kind of look down below the dipper is where I was able to make my observations of comet neowise. And over here in the elevation area that I’m at, in Western Oregon, it’s about 200 or 300 feet above sea level. And there’s there’s kind of a constant problem with haze. And with light pollution in this area, and I think it has to do something with
5:46
Well, like I mean, of course, you know, the amount of population that’s around and but also, something about the air quality or bad air kind of flows out around here that just doesn’t ever seem to be as crisp or as dark as you can get up in the mountains. And, and really, it’s just like a stunning difference, when you’re able to get out further and make some some more clear observations, you know, the level of magnitude of stars that you’re able to reveal, just in a dark night is so much more crisp and clear. It’s just like a, it’s a total difference. So it was cool to I think I first was able to spot just a little fuzzy bit of a second magnitude version of comet neowise while I was here in town, but I tried to make a special trip out toward Eastern Oregon out into the desert just to do some camping stuff. But what I wanted to do at the same time was make some good observations. And also try and get some good photographs of comet neowise as it was coming through during its period, where you could you can make some, some good sightings of it, but it was cool. So going out to Eastern Oregon, as it got dark, a little past 1030 or so as you look to the northwest, you can really see the comet and its tail spread for a couple inches in the sky. And I was really surprised to notice how little of it you could really make out. See, when you’re in an area of almost any light pollution once you’re back in town, or once you’re in a lower elevation area. With some light pollution and haze around it was really difficult to make out the same way that it could out in the desert or out in the mountains. And so I thought that was pretty cool to get to get to see and get to check out over there. But yeah, it was a blast getting to do some stuff out in Eastern Oregon, I went over to the john de river area. And I was checking out that area. There’s a lot of public land out in that area. But there’s also some a lot of private land too. It’s just kind of an interesting area how it sort of broken up and it was cool to get to go out go out to the I headed out to Madras and then I took off and headed over East there until I ran into the john de River. And then I was able to use this map that I have to go through and find some of the open off or just the open roads that are you know, smaller gravel roads that I set up to kind of traverse the back country out there. So I was able to find a few of those that were open and travel around on those for a while. That was pretty cool. I was able to find some dispersed campsites and set up right along the john de River, which is really cool. It’s a beautiful area out there. It’s kind of interesting, the john de river flows through this sort of, I guess it would be I don’t know it’s kind of like Canyon land and it’s also sort of these rolling grass hills that sort of make up the landscape of, of Northern northern and northeastern Oregon. And I think Yeah, as soon as you kind of get a little bit for like a little bit north of bend is when you get out of the Great Basin area and you start to get into another kind of landscape that seems to stretch up north of the Columbia River up into Washington I’ve heard that some of it’s from like really old
8:51
deposits from the river systems and the waterways that were up there and how it were like there’s old old deposits and then an erosion that’s happened from those rivers running through the area for such a long time but but really cool to see kind of the rolling hills and then some of the carved out canyons that go through the john de river area up there what I found the campsite I was sad I was pretty far away from everybody and I was really far away from any substantial town I think it was near i don’t know i don’t even know what it is there wasn’t anything there when I drove through it there’s a bridge and a couple little ranch houses you know real ranches right like just a little a little little house like a little two bedroom house and then 100 acres of cattle to deal with so it seems uh seems like another life out there I want to have they’re dealing with you know, kind of the way the world is things are this summer, but it was cool. Yeah, getting out there. Went to Rei kind of set up my campsite and stuff had my truck going. And that was all pretty easygoing. But then I waited till dark after 1030 Yeah, comet neowise is really visible up below the Big Dipper. I was pretty cool to get to see out there in Eastern Oregon really bright, really clear, you could almost make out the second tail, I have my binoculars with me. I think there’s some 10 by 40 twos. And those really well to view it to view the comment, like really crisp through there through the binoculars and it got really easy to spot most of the night, even just to the naked eye, it was really easy to spot it was like, Oh yeah, it’s right there, there’s a comment. It’s just the big Wisp in the sky. So it was really cool to get to view it, what I did is I set up my tripod, and I have my camera with me. So I set it up with a really wide angle. And then I was trying to get some photographs of it as it was, as the comet was sort of coming down to set on the landscape of the hillside, you know, as the hours went on into the night. So I think I stayed out until maybe one or two in the morning, when the Big Dipper was sort of scooping down a little low onto the horizon. And then at that point, the place where the comment was dipped below the horizon and then was out of view for the rest of the evening. And I think even into the morning, I think by that time when I was photographing it, it wasn’t it wasn’t visible any longer. up in the morning sky, I think they said, you know, at first in early July, you could kind of view it around Capella if you were able to get out early enough, say three or four in the morning. But as as the direction as it was moving, it was kind of creeping up pretty quickly, you know, day over day over day, it would kind of move a good chunk through the sky. And in the direction that is moving, it was moving to be more visible at the nighttime which really offered more hours of good observation time, which I thought was pretty cool to wait until it was really dark enough in the northwest view of the sky probably about 1030 onward is when you’re finally able to make out those kind of finer points of light in the sky in that region. So it was really cool, set up the tripod, set up the camera, set up some manual focus to to get it kind of set sharp at night you can’t you can’t use autofocus when you’re trying to make photographs of the night sky The stars because it just kind of seeks back and forth, you have to set it to manual focus and then
12:13
wring out your your focus ring to infinity and then just back a little bit you’ll notice this every time if you do it, it’s really frustrating the dark because you can’t really always make it out in an easy way and edit your mistake quickly. But if you go all the way to infinity and then take fixed pictures there the night sky you’re going to notice that this points of light that are the stars sort of end up a little fuzzy and it’s because all the way to infinity for whatever reason just isn’t quite in focus at infinity. So you have to go all the way up to infinity and then back it off just a little bit. And that’ll nearly ensure that most of that part of the image is in focus the whole way and it’s difficult even even if you do have an F stop that’s a little bit more tightened out say like an F four f six or something you’re still going to get a lot of that out of focus softness, if the focus ring isn’t really dialed into the right spot. So I tried to work on that a little bit and yeah, dialed in my focus was able to set it up with a reasonable ISO to get some images of the night sky and pick up some of those finer points of light and then it was able to take a series of photographs in a few different locations out there in the john de River Valley which I thought was really cool is pretty to be out there and it was a nice night really warm in the River Canyon. And really remote to like as mentioned, I think I was the only person out there for a few miles I saw another another group coming in on a like a little midsize SUV and they were going fishing out at a bend in the river a couple miles up from where I was. So I took my truck down a little further and camped out just on the side of the river. It was cool nice Green River up to the kind of high desert tan rim rock that runs the area around there. So it was it was a cool evening cool campsite area it’s cool spot to check out comet neowise too. So I tried to check it out. Up until I don’t know what yeah 130 in the morning when I couldn’t see it anymore and then spent the night out there out in the john de river area and then the next morning got up and try to check out some of the different roads and stuff that
14:26
went around.
14:33
You can check out more information at Billy Newman photo comm you can go to Billy Newman photo.com Ford slash support. If you want to help me out and participate in the value for value model that we’re running this podcast with. If you receive some value out of some of the stuff that I was talking about, you’re welcome to help me out and send some value my way through the portal at Billy Newman photo comm forward slash support. You can also find more information there about Patreon and the way that I use it If you’re interested or if you’re more comfortable using Patreon that’s patreon.com forward slash Billy Newman photo
15:12
and I think I just been going through editing a handful of photographs and I want to talk about a few of the ideas that I had around that it was cool I was going through through an archive on a hard drive that I have for a bunch of the images from a lot of the camping that we did during September while we were out this this past year and it was cool working with with the newer Sony cameras like like I talked about a handful of times in this podcast so far and and working by like traveling around and camping and stuff working on the track and all that so it was really cool but so with a lot of these photos a handful of or you know in a waterways they really haven’t been processed to to a final outcome yet so one thing that I was working on was trying to go through some of the photographs from imnaha Oregon and then now we’re going to talk about on here a bit was that area that’s east of of Joseph and enterprise Oregon as you get up toward Hell’s Canyon or Yeah, I guess up there like right on the Snake River and the Idaho border and it’s a cool spot it’s a really interesting little town and the geography out there really changes quite dramatically like right there next to the Snake River and out next all those hills and mountains that are over in that area, but it looks like it used to be way more full of water out there just the amount of erosion that you can you can see that seemed like it ran through there to create this giant gorges that we see now that’s that’s a lot of Earth movement that had happened out there so it’s a really cool area out there but once you get out to him now there’s no services there’s no gas, there’s no store really, I think there might be some type of thing if you if you could call ahead and knew what to call ahead for but there’s a road that cuts out in the in the high River Canyon where the river flows through and then there’s a road that cuts up and it would go out toward Hell’s Canyon or toward a viewpoint at least of at the top of health Kanan as you look down into the Snake River and the Oregon Idaho divide really cool area up there and definitely worth the drive if you can get out there but at a certain point there’s a viewpoint that you’re able to kind of walk out to the shows all of the imnaha Canyon in a really interesting way just the angle of it I think everything starts to line up really nicely in that way and that’s something I’ve tried to kind of look for us on try to put together some photographs. So that area was that was really cool, you know, it’s designed to look really beautiful, but I tried to get real low and bring in some of the some of the contexts in texture the grass, in this this dry grassy field that the cast stressed off on a steep slope down the hillside as it went down to the bottom of the ravine or at the bottom of the canyon of the M the high River Canyon that’s out there but the contours of the land and the distance that kind of all flowed into the same vanishing point as as in how river you know sort of worked its way up back towards the horizon but really beautiful area up there and it was cool just sort of focusing the camera and trying to try to frame that up to sort of capture that immense sness of edge to edge what it what it was really light is sort of feel that the way that just the amount of angle there is to that and so one thing that I was working on with this photograph was an A handful that is from from them Nairobi, Kenya was trying to try to work on some some more advanced black and white conversions of these photographs and I know there’s there’s different different like high contrast filters and stuff for for good black and white images and in a lot of ways that could really help a ton of images especially if they’re shot right or you know cleanly with good light that you know the files are clean, there’s a huge amount you can do with with things like that, but Gosh, yeah, just trying to like go through an ad. Black and White conversions that are a little bit more specific, a little bit more adjusted to some of these photographs, especially ones that have like a structural context to him or a compositional element that’s really just defining the landscape by the structure of the land and by the the angle of the land I call it I try to mess with that a little bit so it was a school working on it now like the the way that it turned out, it kind of pulls some of the yellow color out of it which is really just almost sometimes distracting. And then the strips it down to the kind of sharp angles that come in from the top of the top of the frame to the bottom of the frame. These these other sharp diagonals that are kind of mashed up in parallel with the two so I kind of like that part of the composition elements that come about with when you’re you start working on stuff when when you kind of work or just when you kind of start getting a little bit more trained and stuff and when you’re able to sort of make things a little bit more easily that that starts to come around a bit better but but yeah, it was cool working tonight on a handful of photographs from from them now. rubric came in and try and make some black and white conversions of them.
20:06
Thanks a lot for checking out this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Hope you guys check out some stuff on Billy Newman photo.com few new things up there some stuff on the homepage some good links to other other outbound sources, some links to books and links to some podcasts like this a blog posts are pretty cool. Yeah, check it out at Billy numina photo.com. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode and the back end. Thank you next time
192 California HWY 395 – Photographs Of Comet Neowise – Editing Imnaha River Canyon Photos