During monsoon season in Arizona, I am always watching the western skies through the afternoon in case conditions might be right for nice sunset. If it looks like the sky will be sufficiently clear to the far west for the sun to shine up under cloud cover to my near west then we might get a sunset and I head out to find a shot. This was my first attempt at a drone based HDR sunset panorama using the DJI Mavic 2 Pro. As drones have evolved, using them as tools for high end still photography has gotten better and better. This is a combination of 3 frames, each frame compiled as an individual HDR image from 5 bracketed exposures. It excellent as a still photography tool because I can position the drone in just the right spot very quickly in order to get the composition that works best for me.
Beautiful astrophotography photo of the Colorado River at Gooseneck view shot in late June 2019 when the colorful Milky Way center is visible to the southeast with the lights of Moab, Utah on the distant horizon.
I was born and raised in Arizona - and this was my first visit to the North Rim of the Gran Canyon ... pretty stupid right? Being an avid astro-photographer, I have known for some time that this part of Arizona is the absolute darkest part of the state in terms of light pollution in the atmosphere. Which means it is an excellent area to photograph the stars! Fortunately, I had enough clear sky to capture that awesome Milky Way as it crossed once again over the Grand Canyon just before it started raining. This image was composited from multiple photos from this position close to the North Rim Visitor's Center. Multiple exposures of the stars (about 8 I think) were aligned and merged together in a process called median blend photo stacking that reduces almost all sensor noise from the resulting digital image. Then, multiple long exposures (4 or 5 6 min. exposures) of the canyon were also merged in the same process. The distant lights are at the Grand Canyon South Rim area 10.3 miles away and include lights from hikers descending (or ascending) along the Bright Angel Trail. The orange glow is from the lights of Flagstaff some 72 miles distant.
