Garras

Last Sunday after work I made a short walk with a friend to an old burned tree. A few years ago a careless tourist threw a cigarette butt at it and it caught fire. Luckily the damage was relatively small because the tree is only a few minutes from the town and the firefighters were able to put it out before it spread around the place. Still, it is a remainder of how fragile nature is.

Now the tree is still there, bleached white by the fire and the weather, and since it has no leaves it offers some very nice shapes in the night.

I had already made a few pictures there a year ago, but at the time some clouds appeared and I didn’t have a wide enough lens to do what I wanted. This time the weather was perfect, and with my new 11-16 mm f2.8 I was able to archive something much more interesting.

I decided to do a stack of several exposures (55 single shots) each 30 sec long at f2.8 and ISO 1600 to captures as many stars as possible. The long exposure time (27 minutes total) made some nice star trails and I decided to point the camera straight up to avoid capturing the ground.

Here is the result!

El Chalten, Patagonia Argentina

(55 imagenes, total 27 minutos)

I would have liked to have some more light for the tree but the moon wasn’t up yet. They ended looking like a silhouette, but it’s not too bad.

I went out again yesterday night with the idea of going to Laguna Torre and shooting Cerro Torre in a really long exposure (2 hs +) with a tele lens to get straight lines in the stars, but halfway there I realized I had forgotten my remote release and had to go back. Maybe next time!

Cheers!
Santiago