File:Red Mountain at Night - Flickr - snowpeak.jpg

Red Mountain Numbers 1, 2, and 3 (left to right).

I was down in the hoodoos of San Juan County, New Mexico, walking around and sleeping in my truck. After the first hot day and night I decided to look for a cooler climate. That’s how I came to drive up to the San Juan mountains of Colorado.

A dozen miles north of Silverton, US 550 goes over Red Mountain Pass and begins a series of sharp hairpin curves as it winds down into the valley. There’s a little pull-off with a parking area and some signs containing information about the Idarado mine. You can almost get a good view of the Red Mountain range there, except for the trees that block the view. But near the parking area you can walk eastward about 20 yards down a little trail that takes you past the trees to a location right over the highway, across from the mine. The view from there is excellent. You can see the peaks, the mine trestle in the foreground, and in the distance the Yankee Girl mine buildings.

It was a good location for a time lapse session. The moon was just a sliver in the sky because it was only a couple of days after the new moon. The scene could have used a bit more light after sunset. But I decided to try it anyway. I set up the D800E with my Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens mounted and programmed the Ramper Pro to start at 1630 hours and take a shot every five seconds until 2100 hours. After than, the interval would feather up to a shot every 30 seconds until 0430 hours the next morning. ISO would start at 100 and gradually increase to 3200 as it got darker. Maximum exposure time was 25 seconds.

The sunset went pretty well, and the Milky Way rose in darkness over Red Number 3. At about 0030 hours, I had had enough and decided to end the session. (Because it was a public place I didn’t want to just climb in the truck and go to sleep with my gear sitting out there. Also I was worried that the wind might pick up and blow my camera and tripod down onto the highway below.) So I gathered up my stuff and got in the back of the truck and tried to sleep. The occasional traffic on the highway and headlights sweeping by made it difficult to relax and I didn’t get much sleep. At 0530 hours I got up and drove to Silverton, where I had an omelette at the Brown Bear Restaurant.

The image you see here is a composite from the time lapse sequence. The terrain part was taken about 40 minutes after sunset, while there was still enough light from the western sky and moon to allow some color. It also let me use a low ISO value (100) for minimum noise. For the sky portion, I used the final 12 images in the sequence. Each of these was a 25 second exposure at ISO 3200. This adds up to five minutes of total exposure. To minimize image noise, I ran the sequence of 12 images through StarryLandscapeStacker. This impressive software takes a set of images and rotates them so that the stars line up, eliminating the streaks that you would otherwise get. Then it finds the median luminance value for each pixel in the stack. This averaging effect can cause a dramatic reduction in overall noise. It really works well!