A cool photo of a supernova!

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I was in the glorious High Sierra, camped in Pioneer Basin, enjoying a wonderful star-filled night. The lake was glass, the air dead calm. I had my camera with me as usual, although I had no intentions of taking photos that night. I laid on my back gazing up at the beeeellions of stars that filled the sky, when all of a sudden it happened. A star exploded right before my very eyes. A rare supernova, and I was right there. I didn't have time to aim my camera, I shot from the hip, and was fortunate enough to capture this amazing photo. I caught a little lens flare from the bright pulse of light, but other than that, it came out pretty good. Chances are I'll never see anything like this again, and neither will YOU. Neener neener.”

“How many different images did you blend together to get that one?”

“Neener neener - just bout says it all.”

“Ha ha! dayhiker, this actually came about as an accident! It's a real photo I took of Pioneer Basin, and somehow I accidently dumped black paint into the sky. Don't ask me how, but I did. I'm a rookie at Photoshop. Anyway, it colored the sky black, so I just quickly dotted in some white spots for stars, and in Photoshop there's a generic "lens flare" affect that I added. Very sloppy, took me less than 5 minutes, but ha!, certainly unique! So it's really just one image with a blackened sky and lens flare added.”

“It does look good. It looks more like animation than a photo.

I recently got a 4 megapixel camera and am wanting to dig in a little more than point and shoot and hope for the best. Do you have any books that you could recommend.”

“

Eleven years ago the brightest supernova of modern times was recorded. Now the expanding debris from this tremendous stellar explosion is seen to be crashing into previously expelled material. The onset of this collision is shown by the arrow in the above picture as the yellow spot on the interior of the ring. Although the collision is occurring at speeds near 60 million km/hour, it will appear to take years due to the vast distances involved. As the supernova blast wave moves out, it shock-heats any gas it encounters, causing it to glow. Astronomers are thus hopeful that the blast wave will illuminate the interesting past of SN 1987a, and perhaps provide more clues about the origins of the mysterious rings.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980217.html



More?”

“The above photo was actually cropped from a larger version of this same shot of Pioneer Basin:



I had just cut out the lower section of the photo in El Photoshoppo is all.

As for books, well, I don't shoot digital photos (yet) so I can't help specifically there, but still, shooting is shooting. Is your digital camera a fixed focal point lens, or an slr? The main thing I learned (after years of frustrating point-n-click photo results) is to learn how your film (or digital sensor) "sees" and records an image. It's nothing like the human eye. The dymanic range is much much less, so all darks will be darker, and all lights will be lighter. It's all about lighting, which is why the magical hours of sunrise and sunset are so great for photographers. The contrast is generally lower... same with overcast days. Diffused light and gentle light and "even" light is what you're after, generally speaking. That's why I use GND filters so frequently, they help balance out light that our eyes can see fine, but are too dark or bright for film (or digital).

There's lots of good books out there. It depends if you want to do portraits, landscapes, wildlife, etc. My landscape/adventure hero is Galen Rowell, so I highly recommend his books. John Shaw is great too, as are a whole list of photographers. Most of all I learn from experience, taking lots of photos, and looking at others' photos, like calendars, postcards, posters, centerfold layouts (JUST JOKING), books, magazines, etc. Much of photography is being at the right place at the right time when the lighting goes magic. So just GET OUT THERE with your camera. The nice thing about digital is you can take katrillions of photos and delete the images that suck and learn real quick what looks good. There are some scenes that look spectacular in person but film just won't capture it. With experience you start recognizing what's worth taking a photo of, and what's not. Of course I take many shots just to document a trip and not care much about lighting or a "sweet" technical photo, but I'm referring more to the "wow" factor photography. Don't worry, I type REALLY fast, 100 wpm with gusts up to 120, so I'm just rambling. I'm also eating pizza and playing the guitar and juggling flaming swords as I pet my dogs while typing this, so it's coo. But I suspect I have rambled long enough.”

“Good stuff.


8)”

“The specs don't mention SLR olympus c4000

I'll be doing outdoors shooting and also shots of the kids.

Thanks for the info”

“Hey dayhiker, that's a great camera! It's not slr (you can't change lenses), but it's gotta nice optical zoom on it.

Whatever you do, please, shoot anything you want, but don't shoot the kids.”

“That looks like a champagne super nova to me.”

“Buck, I read your tale, looked at the photo, and said, WTF??!?!

LOL!! ain't photoshop great!”