Posted on April 18, 2024, 2:29 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Since the total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024, would be the last in America until 2044, my main motivation was to witness the event as a family. This called for a different approach than the one I took for the eclipse of 2017. I had traveled with my younger in-laws to Grand Teton National […]
Posted on October 28, 2023, 3:24 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
The solar eclipse of October 14, 2023, was an “annular eclipse”, which happens when the moon passes entirely in front of the sun, but the lunar disk is too far from the earth to cover the entire sun, leaving a “ring of fire” around the moon. When I photographed such an eclipse in 2012, I […]
Posted on August 28, 2017, 1:07 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Summary: For the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 in Grand Teton National Park I chose a backcountry location discovered by William Henry Jackson. My shooting plan to capture this iconic shot did not involve straight photography, but rather a timelapse and a 360-degrees panorama. Attending or not attending ? That is the question […]
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 August 2, 2012, 6:55 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
The May 20 2012 solar eclipse was to be an “annular eclipse”, which occurs when the Moon passes directly in front of the sun, but the lunar disk is too far from the earth to cover the entire sun. This leaves a “ring of fire” with the full brightness of the sun around the black […]
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 2, 2012, 11:41 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Last winter, I traveled from March 12 to March 23 with my friend Regis Vincent to Alaska to seek the Aurora Borealis, also called Northern Lights. Since this was my first attempt, I sought to maximize chances of seeing the Aurora: Auroral activity is strongest slightly above the Polar Circle, which in North America is […]
Posted on January 26, 2012, 5:54 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Although they are not as tall as the coastal redwoods, the giant sequoia trees still reach impressively into the sky. I found it difficult to convey the sense of cosmic height in daylight images. The usually blue sky isn’t visually that interesting, there are almost always harsh shadows or dappled light on a part of […]
Posted on June 3, 2011, 8:10 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Halemaumau crater – home to Pele, Goddess of Hawaiian Volcanoes according to the traditions of Hawaiian mythology – is a pit crater located within the larger summit caldera of Kīlauea in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. During my previous two visits to the Park, a decade ago, Halemaumau crater was inactive. I remember standing at the […]
