Blog

Last full day of the residency. On the weekends it’s quiet around the headquarters buildings where the apartment is located. Woke up to snow flurries. Very stormy last night with high winds and rain. Still windy outside. Waited until 8:30 a.m. for the PF Diner to open so I could try the pancakes for breakfast. Got 2, each the size of the plate, plus a side order of sausage. I think I was the first customer. Very good, and I wasn’t hungry until afternoon.

After looking for spots in the park where I could photograph the space station flyover this evening, I stopped at the Painted Desert Inn. They have amazing glass ceiling tiles painted with Hopi designs. I think this was done during the 1930s renovation by the CCC. Plus some nice murals and tin lighting fixtures.

At 4:44 p.m. there are still lots of clouds overhead, though the sun is shining through as it gets closer to sunset. I have 2 more ideas for photos, not sure if they will happen.

Well, back in the apartment at 7:30, under mostly overcast skies. The moon comes through off and on, but not a good night for stars. I do get an interesting shot of the Painted Desert Inn lit by moonlight, with some dramatic clouds.

So that’s it for the Petrified Forest. A great 2 weeks here exploring the Painted Desert. Thanks to the PF National Park and the National Park Service for the Artist-in-Residence program. And thanks to the Grand Canyon for the great week there. Although the programs at these 2 parks are mostly supported by donations, some of our tax dollars are going to really good use at these and at all the national parks.

Another beautiful sunset and moonset. There’s something about a crescent moon hanging in the
twilight sky that makes it one of the most interesting phases. I had an idea for a multiple exposure photo
of the moon setting, and decided tonight would be the night to get it. I set one camera on a tripod to
shoot a picture every 5 minutes for 2 hours. I started at 6 p.m., when there was still faint light from
the sunset. I eventually used every other frame, so the picture I posted is the moon every 10 minute as
it sets.

After setting the camera for the moon shots, I went to my car for dinner. There was still light on
the horizon, and it was reflecting off the roof of the car. As an experiment, I took a few photos and was
surprised at how interesting they looked. Even though the car is bright red, it reflected the deep blues
of the twilight.

I saw my shadow from the moon as it got darker – a good sign for me since I’m trying to use the
moon to light up the night scenes. I thought it was a pretty successful night of shooting, although I need
to get better shots of the petrified wood and the sky … maybe tonight, when there will be slightly more
light from the moon to light up the landscape.

After the moon set, I moved to a viewpoint called the Teepees for several hills that have eroded
to look like their namesake. I brought out the star-tracking device that I was partially successful with
at the Grand Canyon. This time I brought the instructions and soon had the Astro-Trac working. And it
worked well! There were a few false starts and out-of-focus frames. I started shooting wide-angle shots of
the Milky Way over the Teepees and in other directions. Then on to the objects I tried before – the
Andromeda Galaxy and the Pleiades. By this time it was 10 p.m., and Orion was rising in the east. I shot a
few of the “belt” area and managed to get the Orion Nebula in the frame, a very colorful wisp of gas left
over from an exploding star. I was amazed. I could see some pinks and reds, and this was just with a 200mm
lens on the camera. There is a faint straight line in the picture I posted, just to the left of the bright
nebula. It showed up in several pictures going down and to the left over a period of more than 17 minutes.
It wasn’t a plane, which would go much faster. It probably was a satellite; I’ll have to ask my astronomy
friends. After 2 hours, I packed up and drove back to the apartment.

Earlier on Saturday, I had lunch at the Petrified Forest Diner, next to the visitor center here.
It must be from the 1940s or 50s, very neat and tidy with dazzling fabric on the seats and carpet. Lots of
photos of the diner and the park’s history on the wall, and tons of Route 66 memorabilia; the historic
highway goes straight through Petrified Forest. I had the Boca Burger (vegetable patty) and real onion
rings. I plan to return for breakfast one day.

Drove to Grandview Point last night, which is about 10 miles east on the Desert View Drive that parallels the canyon rim. People were listening to music in a car in the parking lot even though it was quite dark when I arrived. Usually visitors leave right after the sun sets from these view points. Occasionally they would start up their car and turn the headlights on, not a great thing to happen if you’re looking for dark skies. I set up as far from the parking as possible, setting 1 camera to do a one hour time-lapse photo. Though I thought at one point the series might have been ruined by this activity, turns out the photos were fine. I decided to move to another location, even though the tourists in the car had appeared to have gone to sleep in the parking lot.

I found a turn-out along the Desert View Drive that Ann and I had seen before. There was a large rock formation close to the parking area called ‘The Duck’. Ann heard a tour guide tell his group that in recent years the bill had fallen off. It was the coldest night so far so I waited in the car for the 11:42pm moonrise. About 11 a car pulls into the lot behind me and shuts off its lights. Since the parking was right at the spot where I would be setting up my tripod, I was a bit worried.Then about 20 minutes later the people leave. The last quarter moon rise directly in front of me. I managed to shoot for about 45 minutes without any distractions.

First time out shooting the stars last night. In the morning we had walked the Rim Trail, which goes from our Verkamps’s to Mather Point and the main visitor’s center, looking for spots with good views, though it’s hard to say there is a bad view anywhere of the canyon. In the end, I found a plateau about a mile and a half walk from our place; it was flat rocks jutting out from the trail, with no guard rail, so I was pretty careful, especially in the dark.

Before going out, I made a chart of the sunset, moon rise and moon set plus the times and directions of the International Space Station flyovers. Amazingly enough, there was an ISS sighting for every day this week in this part of Arizona, all around the first hour after sunset. So I first set up to photograph the ISS, which appeared right on time at 6:45pm, slowly arching across the sky.

I moved to the flat rocks described above and set up one camera to get star trails as they rotate around the North Star. Then I got various shots of the Milky Way, which was directly overhead stretching from west to east. I realized I couldn’t turn on my flashlight after setting up the first camera — it would ruin that shot. So I gingerly stepped around the flat rocks, hoping not to trip on anything. There was a faint amount of light on the white rocks; it wasn’t completely dark, which was one of the main problems that night. There were only 3 hours between sunset and moonrise, so by the time it began to get pretty dark around 8pm, there was a faint glow in the east from the moon (about 75 percent full).

The deep orange moon rose about 8:50pm, looking very eerie. From the top of the rim, the rock formations of the canyon began to glow in the moonlight. In the 60-second exposures I was taking, the sky also brightened and stars began to be washed out from the moon. I was using a filter that balanced the light between the sky in the top of the photo and the ground in the bottom and was having problems with odd reflections. By the time I figured out how to prevent them, the moon was too high and bright.

I found one more location with an interesting tree and the moonlit landscape before walking back to Verkamp’s. It’s always an adventure doing this kind of photography. It can be very awe-inspiring to stand there with the bowl of stars and the galaxy over your head.