Posted on March 12, 2015, 10:13 am, by QT Luong, under
Gear.
Night photography requires the right tools, chief amongst them lights. After trying many, I’ve settled on a diverse arsenal of lights. The capabilities of some of them will surprise you. In this post, I will point out to a number of inexpensive high performance items that I use and can help enhance your long-exposure night […]
When you think about natural subjects for night photography, things like the rock formations or bristlecone pines of the southwest often come to mind, not the redwood forest. In old-growth groves, the dense canopy obscures most of the night sky. I made so many visits to Redwood National Park in the 1990s that I haven’t […]
Posted on October 29, 2014, 10:09 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Part 1 of 4: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 The dark coniferous forests and imposing mountains of the Cascade Range do not look like an obvious place to look for fall color, but within North Cascades National Park, there are places with impressive displays if you know where to look. In 2010, I […]
Posted on September 11, 2014, 3:24 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Sierra Nevada forest fires are part of the cycle of nature. Lightning started one such fire weeks ago within the designated wilderness of the Yosemite National Park, in Little Yosemite Valley between Half Dome and Mount Starr King. On Sunday afternoon (Sept 7, 2014), fanned by high winds, it exploded all of a sudden, belching […]
Posted on December 31, 2013, 12:01 am, by QT Luong, under
Uncategorized.
In 2013 I took a break from yearly trips to Asia, which allowed me to refocus my efforts on the National Parks project. Although it has been a decade since I photographed each of the 58 US National Parks, I have been revisiting lots of them – 17 this year alone. My goals are to […]
Posted on September 20, 2013, 12:03 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Being sub-tropical, South Florida has only two different seasons. The wet season starts around the middle of May and continues through to November with the last major storms. During this time, South Florida gets a lot of rain and everything gets really wet. The dry season runs from December through April. During this season, everything […]
Posted on October 11, 2012, 12:52 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
During the two last weeks of September, I took a road trip in the Southwest. One of my goals was to create landscape photographs by night in the National Parks. It was productive, but tiring. In the days of film, sensitivity was too low for stars (unless you wanted trails, which I am not that […]
Posted on June 8, 2012, 5:39 pm, by QT Luong, under
Gear.
Watching a moonbow with your own eyes is an awesome experience. While the camera can capture colors that the eye doesn’t see (as explained in my previous blog post about moonbows), the way it works doesn’t capture the experience that well. A long moonlit exposure looks almost the same as a daylight exposure that one […]
Posted on May 30, 2012, 12:11 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
A moonbow is a rainbow produced by moonlight, rather than direct sunlight. While observing a rainbow in the sky requires rare and unpredictable combination of conditions, it isn’t too difficult to predict the appearance of spray moonbows, which occur in the mist of waterfalls. Yosemite moonbows have been known for some time. John Muir described […]
Posted on May 17, 2012, 12:28 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Winter lasts more than half of the year in Fairbanks. The snowpack is established by October and remains until May. From November to March, all the water is frozen solid. Besides the fact that the month of March is the most favorable for photographing the Aurora in Alaska, another reason to visit Fairbanks at this […]