by Max Alexander » Wed Jun 09, 2010 6:10 pm
I took the photograph of the
Sun rising over Stonehenge in the 'summer solstice week' two years ago, in June 2008. It's not possible to get a shot of the site without people on the summer solstice day itself; as many of you will know, the guardians of Stonehenge, English Heritage opens up general public access to the stones on the summer solstice morning itself. So I waited until close to the solstice (which turned out to be June 17th), to get a picture for my IYA2009 project 'Explorers of the Universe' (that was subsequently exhibited at the Royal Albert Hall in London;
http://www.maxalexander.com/astronomy). I had a favourable forecast, and drove several hours from London, arriving at about 2:00 in the morning, followed by a quick and cold nap in the car. I then went onto the site to look for the 'best' position to get my shot. English Heritage, who is a client of mine, had given me special permission to be onsite. However, I decided I had a better shot from outside their perimeter fence, across the A303, which is a main arterial road in the west of England.
Looking towards the rocks, in the early morning light was an evocative scene, emphasised by the morning mist that serendipitously appeared; however, when I was setting up and taking the picture, cars and trucks were whosing past my ladder and tripod/camera setup at a great rate of knots, and I did have to wait for the camera to settle to get the pictures. It was my first attempt at getting the shot, so didn't know where precisely to stand. It was trial and error, until I saw the Sun come up (which was spine chilling; that said, obviously exercise extreme caution when photographing the Sun including not to look at it directly, especially with a long telephoto lens, and use a proper solar filter to assist with the framing), and this involved racing up and down the roadside with ladder & tripod to get the Sun rising directly over the stones. Things happen fast, especially with the narrow angle of view that this lens gave me, so I had to react very quickly, and the peak of the shot was over in a flash.
I thought it would take several attempts to get the picture, but I got lucky.
Effectively, I used a 600 mm lens - 300mm with a 2x converter on a full frame. It's all in one shot, with no manipulation, and the Nikon D3 has a fantastic feature called Active D-Lighting that records the high contrast scene in a way that is close to how the eye sees it.
Finally, Stonehenge is around 5,000 years old, and while not agreed universally, is said by many historians to mark the beginning of astronomy in the UK.
I took the photograph of the [url=http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=19725]Sun rising over Stonehenge[/url] in the 'summer solstice week' two years ago, in June 2008. It's not possible to get a shot of the site without people on the summer solstice day itself; as many of you will know, the guardians of Stonehenge, English Heritage opens up general public access to the stones on the summer solstice morning itself. So I waited until close to the solstice (which turned out to be June 17th), to get a picture for my IYA2009 project 'Explorers of the Universe' (that was subsequently exhibited at the Royal Albert Hall in London; http://www.maxalexander.com/astronomy). I had a favourable forecast, and drove several hours from London, arriving at about 2:00 in the morning, followed by a quick and cold nap in the car. I then went onto the site to look for the 'best' position to get my shot. English Heritage, who is a client of mine, had given me special permission to be onsite. However, I decided I had a better shot from outside their perimeter fence, across the A303, which is a main arterial road in the west of England.
Looking towards the rocks, in the early morning light was an evocative scene, emphasised by the morning mist that serendipitously appeared; however, when I was setting up and taking the picture, cars and trucks were whosing past my ladder and tripod/camera setup at a great rate of knots, and I did have to wait for the camera to settle to get the pictures. It was my first attempt at getting the shot, so didn't know where precisely to stand. It was trial and error, until I saw the Sun come up (which was spine chilling; that said, obviously exercise extreme caution when photographing the Sun including not to look at it directly, especially with a long telephoto lens, and use a proper solar filter to assist with the framing), and this involved racing up and down the roadside with ladder & tripod to get the Sun rising directly over the stones. Things happen fast, especially with the narrow angle of view that this lens gave me, so I had to react very quickly, and the peak of the shot was over in a flash.
I thought it would take several attempts to get the picture, but I got lucky.
Effectively, I used a 600 mm lens - 300mm with a 2x converter on a full frame. It's all in one shot, with no manipulation, and the Nikon D3 has a fantastic feature called Active D-Lighting that records the high contrast scene in a way that is close to how the eye sees it.
Finally, Stonehenge is around 5,000 years old, and while not agreed universally, is said by many historians to mark the beginning of astronomy in the UK.