Lindsay Thomson

Well, just to start off with, I am still in Bishop photographing the night sky and the fall colors. Today is Friday, October 2, so the two images I attached to the blog will not be printed in time for the fall tour, but when I’ll print them after the fall tour, they should be stunning. I brought my laptop up here with its smaller screen. So it’s difficult to do post processing on astrophotography images because I don’t have my big monitor here lol. The Milky Way is my first pass at post processing, so it’s not complete but it gives you an idea of the night sky up here. The Milky Way was a river of stars last night and it rivals the dark skies of Utah. I have been photographing fall colors all week here. The conditions are perfect. There are no yellow leaves on the ground. That means all the yellow leaves are still on the trees. The skies have been clear, there’s been hardly any wind, and it’s nice and warm during the day and night. My studio will be open all three days of Ojai studio fall tour. From 10 AM to 5 PM we live in Oak View. Hope to have time to stop by.

I am in the Eastern Sierras photographing fall colors this week. Bishop is going off, if anyone is interested. I'm guessing some of the places I've been to are 90-100%. Next weekend October 10-12 is Ojai Studio Tours. My gallery will be open all three days 10am-5pm. I won't have any images from this trip printed yet. But I can print them for you after the tour. I use pro digital cameras, so I can print most any size. I printed two images 2'x3' and helped the client hang them in his home last week. The prints turned out perfect. Also, I have a Milky Way Over Green Valley framed print at the Buenaventura Art Association new location at Ventura Harbor. They are open seven days a week.

Here are two images of the Milky Way I photographed on Monday night at the beach. Both are single images. One image has the Moon and Venus descending. Both are bright enough that I could see their reflection on the ocean. It was so beautiful to watch them descend behind the ocean. Since my main goal was to shoot a timelapse of the Milky Way, I am using a long exposure and have the aperture opened the maximum amount. If I were to photograph just the moon and Venus, I would never photograph it like that. I'd use a different lens and camera settings. So in this image, the moon and Venus are too bright and overexposed. It's extremely difficult to photograph a single image with such a wide dynamic range. The point I want to make is how light, yes even the moon, affects how we can and can't see the Milky Way. Compare both images and you can see how much more visible the Milky Way is AFTER the moon sets. All in all, I call it a successful night of photography. All alone on the quiet beach with the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. Marveling at the construction skills of the people who created the teepees out of driftwood. The sky was clear-ish and I had the moon, Venus and the stars to keep me company. So peaceful. So grateful to be living here.

I am thrilled the night sky was so dark and there was very little light pollution in the northeast sky above Lake Cachuma. I was photographing the meteor showers and the Milky Way last week. This week, I am working on stacking images for a star trails image. I shot 377 images on just one camera. I haven't had time to look at the images from the other camera yet. However, this image has only 99 stacked images. When I stack any more than that, the stars obliterate the sky with light. I have not had this happen before! I hope the land north and northeast of Cachuma stays free of development and light pollution. Dark skies are a gift in Southern California. The federal government owns this land now. You can see the stars seem to rotate around Polaris, the North Star, as the Earth rotates. I used a wide angle lens, so the star trails look a bit oblong in the left upper corner, but it really should be circular. Work in progress..... In the other image, I've circled a Perseids meteor and the Andromeda Galaxy for you to see. Once the images are stacked, you will not be able to see these.

It is the week of the new moon and I am photographing the Milky Way, star trails and a bonus this week, the Perseids Meteor Shower outside Santa Ynez and Lake Cachuma. In addition to the Perseus in the northeast sky, there are also two other meteor showers going on. In the south, they are the Capricornids and Aquariids. I have one more night to photograph and it promises to be a clear night. I am doing a bit of post processing during the day, but I do not have my big monitor with me, so it is not a fine tuned image I am posting. So no judging please lol ;) Here is an image of a GIANT green fireball next to the Milky Way. I used Google AI to find out where the green meteor came from. I gave AI the time and location. I was expecting it was Capricorns or Aquariids because my cameras were pointing south. BUT NO! It was a meteor than emanated from the Perseids constellation! The Perseids are in the northeast. The Milky Way is in the southern part of the sky. I was shocked when I read this! That meteor traveled all the way from the northern sky to the southern sky! Some of you want to know how I process my images. There are a couple of different exposures going on here. At night time the foreground is always darker than the sky. Both sky and foreground need to be photographed at the proper exposures. This image is a blend of a Blue Hour foreground image so I can capture the detail (and in this case, cows) while there is still a little bit of light before night time. Otherwise the foreground is black. Black foregrounds do not appeal to me in the least. Can you see those uplights under the oak trees on the right? A long exposure makes those lights glaringly bright and ruins the foreground. I shoot the sky as a time lapse at the proper exposure. That is the only way to get the meteors in my shots. So I have over 500 images from this camera. I shoot with two cameras with two different wide angle lenses. I'll have this image printed for you to see during the Fall Tour, October 10-12, 10am-5pm. Or you can contact me if you do not want to wait that long to see it. lindsay.thomson.art@gmail.com, 805.272.5990

(Just in case the my font is too small, here is what I typed) Just incredible! Below is my “Milky Way and Oak Tree 2” and it is one of my very earliest Milky Way images. I shot this in 2019 with my Sony A6000 crop sensor camera (not full frame camera like I use now.) I am learning more about astronomy and came across a blog on social media that referenced a nebula that absolutely stunned me because of its resemblance to a flying bat! It is LDN 43: The Cosmic Bat Nebula. This image is on the NASA website and the credit and copyright belongs to: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby. It is located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. The image was taken with a telescope of course, and is NOT AI. the nebula is right about where the circle is on my Milky Way image.

This image is one of my earliest astrophotography image. So six years ago. The title is "I Am Here." said the Milky Way. For centuries mankind has been studying and exploring the universe. For the past year or so, I have been taking astronomy classes online through my astronomy club. Most of the club members are at PhD or Masters level. I am at kindergarten level. I am able to keep up somewhat, but I am at a major disadvantage. I never took advance math classes or physics in either high school or college. Plus I am learning with a 71 year old brain. But hey, I am interested in learning this stuff. I'm grateful we have Google classroom where I can review the video lessons and read the slide presentations over and over again. I have two rules as far as astrophotography goes. Rule 1: Nothing ventured, nothing gained (I tell myself this when I start to wimp out at going out at night to do photography.) Rule 2: Use it or lose it. (Challenge the brain. Don't be the old dog who cannot learn new tricks.) These two rules keep me relevant and motivated in today's world.

If you happen to be in Los Angeles and are interested in astrophotography, I have six framed prints at The Loft at Liz's. The exhibit is "Galactic Nature" and runs til the end of May. The Loft at Liz’s 453 S. La Brea Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90036 (323) 939-4403 ext. 4

I drove back to Cambria last week to do more astrophotography. Yes, that's right, I was working the night shift again, lol. Most of the grass on the mountains were golden brown at the higher elevations, but there was still alot green mountains facing the ocean. The oak trees looked healthy and the foliage was dark green. I could not shoot every night, the clouds rolled in half the nights I was there. So I was grateful for the still, serene clear dark sky on the very first night I photographed the skies.

Last night the Santa Ana winds were holding steady, so the skies above the ocean were very, very clear. Lucky me. It was the perfect opportunity to get in a little bit of rocket photography practice. I used my Sony A7RIV camera and 24m lens. The timing for launch was ideal. Sunset was at 7:23pm and launch was 7:50pm. So the launch was during nautical twilight. Beautiful sunset colors were still in the sky. Colors from the rocket plumes were reflected in the ocean. The ocean waves are blurred nicely thanks to the long exposure. There is always a big gap in the plumes during stage separation. Next time, I'll try my 20m lens to try to get more of the "jellyfish effect" in the left side of the frame.

I just finished post processing Milky Way Over Green Valley. To say I am thrilled with the final image is an understatement. This was a difficult shoot due to the time of night the Milky Way rose above the mountains. I woke up at the hotel at 3am, got dressed, slammed some coffee down my throat and drove out to the photo site. It was windy as all get-out. I used my car as a windbreak, but still the wind circled around my car. My usual workflow is to set up two cameras to shoot the Milky Way as time lapses with two different focal length lenses, but it was much too windy to do that. I set up my camera with the heaviest lens on top of my heaviest tripod. I stood next to the tripod with my hands ready to catch the camera if it was knocked over by the wind. I didn't know til I got the images on the computer if the stars were in focus due to the wind. I shot the foreground during blue hour to capture the beauty of the green mountains, then blended it with the sky with the Milky Way in it. Do you know why photographers do it this way? Because the sky and the foreground are two different exposures. If I expose for the sky, the foreground turns out black. Then what is the point of going to a place with beautiful landscapes if the foreground turns out completely underexposed. I must say I am impressed with my new Sigma 20m f1.4. It is outperforming my Sony lens. Shock! If you squint your eyes, you can see Morro Rock waaaay in the distance. I'll do a bit more tweaking to get it ready for printing. I'll have it printed for Ojai Studio Artists Second Saturday, May 9, 10am to 5pm.

I feel so fortunate that I was able to photograph the total lunar eclipse just a few miles from home. Let me tell you, I was nervous it would be foggy. The previous morning, the skies were completely covered with fog and lasted til mid morning. But in the early, early hours (O'dark thirty) of Tuesday, March 3, the skies were completely clear. I thanked my lucky stars. I packed up the car and drove a few miles to the outskirts of Ojai, set up my tripods and cameras and began shooting the eclipse. I used my 600m telephoto lens, which resulted in a very large moon image with exceptional color and clarity. Add to the ambience were the voices of a few coyotes howling in the dark night. the sounds and sights were like a setting for a mystery movie or novel. The next total lunar eclipse for our area will be in December 2028.