r/pics • u/[deleted] • 20d ago
I took this 4 hour long picture of myself climbing Devil's Tower with LEDs tied to my body.
https://i.redd.it/ldvwiiv39zj71.jpg
[deleted]
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u/Primary_Budget_8050 20d ago
How did you take this picture without over exposing it? I'm guessing this was taken on BULB mode right?
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u/shatteredankle 20d ago
I wrote a long comment that explains the process. But, you're right. In bulb mode, it would be overexposed. This is a composite of a bunch of 30 second exposures.
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u/Cracktory 20d ago
For some reason I thought they stopped allowing people to climb it.
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u/shatteredankle 20d ago
There's a voluntary ban for the month of June to respect the native ceremonies.
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u/nigella1986 20d ago
I love that you wouldn't of known what it was gonna be like as you climbed down! Nice photo!
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u/dayChuck 20d ago
Please explain further
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u/shatteredankle 20d ago
I wrote a long comment on here, do you have any specific questions beyond that. I'd be happy to answer them.
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u/dayChuck 20d ago
Going straight to that comment. And if I have any further questions after reading, I'll be sure to ask. Really cool pic.
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u/URAPNS 20d ago
Fuck the LEDs and long exposure. I'm mor impressed that you climbed Devils Tower.
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u/shatteredankle 20d ago
Thousands of people climb Devil's Tower every year.
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u/Thrilling1031 20d ago
We are not those thousands, we are impressed, especially with doing it in the dark.
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u/shatteredankle 20d ago
Here's some more details about the set up for those who may be interested.
I scouted out a position to dial in my composition before it got dark. Then I came back during "blue hour" (the time after the sun sets and the stars are starting to come out, but it's not quite dark dark yet). I set up my camera on a tripod and took a properly exposed shot of the tower and the hill below it (30sec, f1.4, ISO 500). Then, I waited till it got properly dark, changed the settings to expose for my LEDs (30sec, f8, ISO 320), connected my phone to my camera, set into burst mode and used my phone as an external shutter to lock the shutter down.
Then, I simply hiked up, put on my sweater and pants that have the LEDs and climbed up the 500 foot tall 5 pitch route. I changed the colors at the top of each pitch.
After topping out, and getting back to the camera at almost 5 in the morning, the batteries were completely dead and I just had to hope that they died after we finished the climb.
It turns out that they did and the very last image my camera took was me topping out the route.
Then, it took many hours of tweaking everything in photoshop to get the final image. I had a series of 30 second exposures from 9:30 to 1:30. I had to edit them, then pick out just the ones of me climbing with the LEDs (not the ones of my partner with his headlamp), add all those together into a single image in photoshop. Then I took the "blue hour" image and overlayed the lights onto that, so that the rock had some more detail. And then, I took all the images from that night and added them all together to get the full star trails. Then I had to cut out the stars from the climbing/blue hour image and replace them with the star trails image.