Scott Korsten shared these photos of a storm passing through Sioux Falls on August 31st. “We were in the city limits of Sioux Falls that Saturday night,” Korsten says. “Our niece had just moved into her new house. Although there was golf ball and baseball-sized hail in some places, her brand new home was spared any damage.”
Tommie Fantine Lauer shared these photos of the sunset near Lennox. Lauer was born in Sioux Falls and currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. She makes Lennox her home when visiting South Dakota. You may view and download more of her photos here.
Scott Korsten shared these photos of rural Sioux Falls. “Like so many other South Dakotans, my eyes are drawn to the sky, especially when the weather is active or changing,” Korsten says. “My favorite images come from times when the three C’s are present in varied degrees — clouds, color and change.”
Korsten considers himself a “photo hobbyist.” He regularly volunteers his photography efforts to Children’s Home Society and the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra. Korsten is one of the founding partners of Showplace Wood Products and is director of marketing for their cabinet company.
John Mitchell shared these photos of a recent stormy night in Pierre. Mitchell is originally from Spearfish but now lives and works in Pierre as a computer support specialist for the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation. “But don’t get me type-cast as a computer nerd, because I’m a nature-lover and photographer at heart,” he jokes.
Mitchell took one photography class in high school and has been honing his skills ever since. “Photography is my escape, my ‘playing golf,’ if you will. I try to go out and take photos every evening,” he says. “Some people I’ve met over the years often don’t realize how much beauty there is in South Dakota and it is my hope to share that with them.” View more of his photos on Facebook and at sodakmoments.com.
My childhood best friend introduced me to science fiction. I remember borrowing every one of his copies of Isaac Asimov’s robot books as well as all of Ray Bradbury’s short stories. He had almost every Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback while I gathered all Frank Herbert’s Dune books as well as any Star Trek and Star Wars books I could find. You may ask what does science fiction have to do with photography. Not that much really, but let me explain where I’m going here.
Collecting sci-fi paperback books back then meant collecting some amazing cover art. Science fiction in particular had spectacular”other-world” art that often persuaded me to buy the book even though I had never heard of the author. These science fiction tales as well as the imagery that it came bundled in really did spark my interest in space and astronomy. So when a co-worker told me about a new comet that would be swinging by Earth this month, I was pretty excited. Up until now, I’d never seen or photographed a comet before.
Another co-worker shared a great website for stargazers (www.spaceweather.com) with me last year. I immediately consulted the site and found out about comet Pan-STARRS and the projected”best” time to view in the Northern Hemisphere. Starting early in March, the comet would make its appearance in the lower western sky just after sunset. On March 12th, I couldn’t resist my curiosity any longer. I was determined to find this comet and try to photograph it. It was cloudy in Sioux Falls, but the internet told me it would start to clear up somewhere west of Mitchell, so I west I went.
Between Plankinton and White Lake the clouds dissipated. I took the White Lake exit and proceeded north through town to find a suitable location to scan the sky. Since it was another scenic South Dakota sunset, I made sure to stop and shoot a few photographs as I drove by White Lake and up into the hills to the north.
I found a nice spot on a hillside northwest of town and although the waxing moon was beautiful, I could not see any sign of a comet. It was supposed to be just a few degrees to the left of the moon, but I couldn’t see it, even with binoculars. Another five to ten minutes went by and the sky grew darker. I was about ready to call the whole thing a bust when I decided I should at least get a shot of the moon over the landscape.
“There it is!” I whispered out loud. I was looking at the back of my camera and to my surprise, the comet showed up on the LCD. I still couldn’t see it in the sky, but the long exposure coupled with a telephoto lens brought it out unmistakably. I was giddy. I snapped a few more photos and then remembered a lone prairie windmill I had passed on the way up the hill. I grabbed my gear and drove as fast as possible to the side of the field with the windmill some 200 yards away. I grabbed my tripod, a flashlight and my camera then half ran, half stumbled though the field in order to line up the windmill, moon and comet.
I didn’t have much time as both the moon and the comet were sinking towards the horizon and the wispy cloud band was starting to obscure them. On my first shot, I missed the comet entirely, but happened to catch an owl on the windmill that I had no idea was even there. I widened out for my second shot and there it was. Comet Pan-Starrs was hanging in the sky just opposite of the moon with my windmill in between. The images my camera produced reminded me of one of those old science fiction covers I used to love as a kid, minus the spaceships and robots of course. On the way back home, I may or may not have cued up the Star Trek theme on my iPod. It’s funny what chasing a comet with a camera can do to a full-grown man.
Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.
Aaron Ploog takes the original definition of photography,”drawing with light,” literally. The self-styled noctographer shoots after dark, using hand-held flashguns, strobe lights and other accents to augment the moon and starlight in his long-exposure West River scenes. The effects created by his technique, called light painting, can be subtle or dramatic, but there’s no digital trickery involved. See more at facebook.com/awakeatnightphoto.
Patience is a virtue. We’ve all heard the phrase. I’m not sure our”need it now” culture is very good at practicing it, however. I know I struggle with it. Just ask my co-workers how well I wait for the latest project to get done. I guess they just don’t understand how much I need to get the work off my plate. I need to move on to the next project. Unfortunately a hurried project usually ends up needing to be redone. Thus creating more work, which means I really could relearn a lesson or two in patience. Once again, my photography hobby has an answer: a lesson in patience involving”star trail” photography.
During the night, the stars above seem to move across our sky due to our planet’s rotation. All stars do this except Polaris, the north star. Astronomy tells us that Polaris is positioned as close to straight above our planet as any other visible star. So when our planet rotates, the star seems to be fixed, much like how the point of a spinning top stays centered. A Paiute legend tells of a mountain sheep who was an excellent and sure footed climber. He found the tallest and steepest mountain and began to climb. It was nearly impossible to reach the summit and at one point he had to go through a long vertical cave in order to reach the highest point. After going through the cave, a rockslide closed up the entrance and the climber was stuck at the highest point of the peak with barely any room to even turn around. His father then turned him into a star. This star became the north star and the stars of the constellations around him were other sheep trying in vain to find the path up the peak, and that is why they circle the north star.
I’ve always been impressed by photos that capture this phenomenon and resolved to learn how to do it myself. I’ve found a couple different methods. One is to get a tripod and a remote cord and set your camera on”bulb” and open up the exposure for a long period of time. The trick is to figure out just how long to keep the exposure open in order to get the length of trails desired as well as adjusting for any ambient light that may spill in from a nearby city or the rising moon. It is not an easy balance to find and my patience has been tested at almost every attempt. For every one good image I get, I wreck about three or four exposures. Imagine waiting for an hour to see what was supposed to be an amazing star trail photograph totally overexposed and ruined. That’ll try anyone’s patience. Once you get it right, however, it makes the photo all the more meaningful and fun to look at.
The other method to make a star trail image is to take multiple exposures of a star scene and layer these images together in an image editing software program, adjust the layer modes to”lighten” and magically all the stars show up together to make star trails. I just discovered this process and applied it to some image sequences I made at Palisades State Park in February of 2010. I was pleasantly surprised by the final star trail images that I didn’t even know I had hidden in my files. Whatever way you choose to go about shooting star trails, it is a very rewarding and fun way to capture some of our unique South Dakota scenes. I particularly like to shoot old and/or historical buildings in order to symbolize time passing and the relative short time we have here on earth. Added to that, the whole process is a huge patience builder. Which is good for me as I’m told patience is a virtue I could use a lot more of… and the sooner the better.
Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.
Lyman County farmer, Randy Halverson, was featured in our current issue of South Dakota Magazine for his stunning images of South Dakota’s night sky. His keen eye and sophisticated equipment allow him to capture details that are rarely seen by the naked eye. His favorite technique is long exposure photography, which is then incorporated into time-lapse videos.
Almost a year ago to this date, Halverson set up his camera near his Kennebec farm during a brutal cold snap. Wind chills plunged to 25 below zero, and Halverson had to regularly place his cameras and computer equipment in coolers filled with hand warmers to keep frost at bay and the electronics functioning. The starry sky, low wispy clouds racing across the horizon and frozen landscape, illuminated by the bright white light of a full moon, created an eerie scene.
You might want to put on an extra blanket before you watch it.
To see more of Randy’s videos, visit his website, DakotaLapse.
King David of the ancient Hebrews wrote that the heavens declare God’s glory and is proof the Creator exists (Psalm 19). Just over a century ago, Vincent Van Gogh painted his magnum opus”The Starry Night” which is now one of the most recognized images in the world. I can easily sing along to Skeets McDonald’s”Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” from hearing it so often in our 1988 Oldsmobile car that featured a new-fangled car stereo cassette player. (Great Country Hits of the 50’s, The Statler Brothers and The Mamas and the Papas are all burned in my memory from those days. We only had a few cassettes at the time.)
All these thoughts and memories run through my mind when I’m out trying to capture photos of the stars. Just over a year ago, I happened to view some amazing timelapse videos of night scenes in Arizona and instantly made a decision that I needed to learn how to do that. Before I could start, I needed to learn how to take photos of the night sky.
The essentials include a tripod, flashlight, remote cable and a camera that allows you to set long exposures. Vampire sleeping habits are helpful too. My first attempts took place at Palisades State Park near Garretson, SD in mid-November of last year. One of my favorite images from that night is an example of what I call”flashlight graffiti.” I set a long exposure on my camera and proceeded to paint the rocks with light from my flashlight. I did my initials in one image and one of my favorite bands, U2, in another. I figure I now have something to send Bono and the boys if they need some unique artwork for their next album.
I went out to the Palisades again on a crisp, clear night in February. I brought two cameras and spent roughly two hours scrambling over the rocks in the dark getting scenes of the stars passing overhead. Once I got over scaring myself with horror movie scenes that kept popping into my head, the night turned into a magical time of just being in awe of our vast universe and God’s creation.
This spring and summer I have been trying to capture the Milky Way in the night sky. To do this you need to be well away from the light pollution of larger cities (I would suggest at least 20 miles) on a moonless night. It is also helpful to have a fast lens (f2.8 or less) and a sturdy tripod. I typically shoot around 30 second exposures at 1600 or 3200 ISO. It takes time and patience, but the rewards of capturing the starry hosts and being humbled by them are worth every minute of lost sleep. Just don’t watch any “Friday the 13th” movies before you go.
Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.
Today we stumbled upon the website of Randy Halverson, a farmer from Kennebec whose photos and videos of South Dakota’s night sky have been shared around the world.
Halverson raises corn by trade, but does time lapse photography as a hobby. He describes it as the opposite of high speed photography. The exposures are long, and when replayed at a normal speed things appear to move faster. He has shot storm clouds, cottonwoods and the Milky Way passing over a cornfield. The video that’s gotten the most buzz lately is his “Sub-Zero: A Winter Night Time Lapse.” Halverson braved 25-below wind chill to create a 2 minute, 43 second video of the night sky, featuring the constellation Orion passing overhead.
National Geographic called his videos “jaw-dropping.” Watch and you’ll understand why.
