I truly wonder when Ann sleeps. She works hard as a photographer during the day, all day, and yet has time to capture these incredible nocturnal images. She clued me on to the Orionids meteor shower, for which I owe her thanks, and I’d been meaning to feature here for a while. Her Flickr Set of these images includes roll-over notes of which celestial bodies can be seen in the images.
I truly wonder when Ann sleeps. She works hard as a photographer during the day, all day, and yet has time to capture these incredible nocturnal images. She clued me on to the Orionids meteor shower, for which I owe her thanks, and I’d been meaning to feature here for a while. Her Flickr Set of these images includes roll-over notes of which celestial bodies can be seen in the images.
What kind of equipment do you use?
Many of these images were made with a Nikon d50 and an old telescope tripod. Now I primarily use the d200 with a few different lenses, and a solid tripod with a pistol head grip. For most night skies, I use my 50mm f/1.2 lens.
Why do people make photographs?
People make photographs for all kinds of different reasons. Me: I make some for money, others for memories, and still more out of a desire to share my concept of the universe with other people. The camera allows me to capture the movements of light and time in a static image. It lets me see things as I never could with just my eyes.
I shoot mostly in digital, but my images are not altered much. Sometimes i do slight cropping and color/density correction, but for the most part, they look the same here as on the back of the camera. I don’t mean to say that there is any problem with using all of the available tools for manipulating digital images, I just tend to work in a simpler way.
The stars give me some slight idea of the beauty and immensity of the universe. Quiet observation of a deep black sky brings insight into the energetic void from which we all spring, in which we all exist. Some people call it the universe, god, chaos, or the ultimate ground of being – ultimately, these names are all ‘fingers pointing towards the moon,’ to borrow from wei wu wei/bruce lee. The night sky reminds me that these concepts are just concepts, and that ultimately, reality is just what we are experiencing right now.
