Clanger_mcbanger

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Clanger_mcbanger Join our unique and immersive astro + photography adventure tours
www.blazingheavens.com/photoadventures

The Nocturnal Knight of the Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness 📸✨ No no no, the Sandstone Steed! Wait it actually looks more l...
10/19/2026

The Nocturnal Knight of the Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness 📸✨ No no no, the Sandstone Steed! Wait it actually looks more like a Wizards hat… How about the Cosmic Conjurer? If you come up with a better name for this sandstone knight or wizard’s hat looking rock please let me know because I’m struggling!

Between teaching astrophotography, planning future astro trips, getting people prepared for them, nonstop fixes on my vehicles, family & friend time, and shooting for Visit Arizona I carved out a few nights (one all nighter) diving a bit more conscientiously into my editing work flow.

So the foreground was shot on a 14-24mm, the sky was (tracked) shot as a 3 image panorama at 40mm, and then I shot a separate stack for the Hydrogen Alpha (deep reds in the Milky Way) that was 15 x 4 minutes with a 12nm Astronomik H-alpha filter.

I’ve been pretty sloppy in the past with shooting and combining Hydrogen Alpha data in the night sky with the visible spectrum of light, but a few more dedicated knights (pun intended) and I’ll have it down.

It feels great to have time to edit again, it’s one of my favorite parts of the night photography process. In fact, my good friend Andrew Imhoff and I will be putting on an editing and Astro workshop this December 11-14 in sunny Arizona during the Geminid meteor shower that will have Astro opportunities as well as ample editing classes, lessons, and individual instruction showing fundamentals as well as advanced editing techniques.

Shoot me an email if you’d like the details: [email protected]

Panoramas I’ve taken in the last year or so capturing our Milky Way Galaxy stretching across the night sky ✨A few were s...
10/17/2026

Panoramas I’ve taken in the last year or so capturing our Milky Way Galaxy stretching across the night sky ✨

A few were shot with a 14-24mm f/2.8 wide angle but more often than not I find myself lugging my prime lenses around like the 28mm f/1.4 or 40mm f/1.4.

Traditionally you want a wide angle lens to capture a wide angle scene! However wielding a deeper focal length allows you to capture more detail in each shot, but then you have to take 4-5x more images to capture the scene- tedious, but worth it!

This involves staying at a sight at twilight/early night and sleeping there to shoot the foreground, waiting, returning later, or sometimes showing up at 3am and shooting until sunrise to capture it all.

So on top of the vast panorama images, I’m essentially HDRing or bracketing two sequences: shooting deep twilight foregrounds of the landscapes while there is some ambient light and color, then later using a star tracker to shoot the Milky Way as the deeper focal length requires longer exposures to capture the detail and avoid the Earth’s rotation or “star trails” and loss of detail.

Combining it all in post processing one of the biggest focuses to make my life easier during all this, is to stop my lens down significantly and also pre processing each individual image doing lens profile corrections, specifically vignetting.

You can notice some odd dark streaks and blending oopsies in some of the images where the vignettes corners of individual images meet and combine in the panorama.

Of course another thing to improve on, but I never sweat any mistakes or imperfections in my images, a mindset I teach to all the “Pixel Peepers” I teach on my workshops 😆

At the end of the day, the imperfections in my work, to me, will always be a human finger print in my work, a stamp of butt sweat and tears that AI can’t replicate. Well, at least not in my life time at this rate :)

I’ve been spending more time in the canyons right here in my backyard of Northern Arizona and feel eternally grateful my...
10/16/2026

I’ve been spending more time in the canyons right here in my backyard of Northern Arizona and feel eternally grateful my path has led to living in one of the best places for starry skies, soul touching beauty, and connecting with God ✨

What makes Arizona, particularly Northern Arizona, one of the best places in the world to see the night sky is the lack of light pollution, elevation (less atmosphere), and consistently clear forecasts throughout the year. Visit Arizona

Locations:
1. Lees Ferry
2. Antelope Canton (Navajo guide)
3. Horseshoe Bend (be there before sunset & you can stay)
4 & 5. Marble Canyon
6. South Rim Grand Canyon
7. Cape Royal, North Rim Grand Canyon

Did you know you can tour the world famous Antelope Canyon all to yourself… Just go at night 😉✨ With our Private Navajo ...
10/12/2026

Did you know you can tour the world famous Antelope Canyon all to yourself… Just go at night 😉✨

With our Private Navajo Guide NYBegay😎 we got the opportunity to capture night photos in several Navajo Canyons- no crowds or timelines, just slow moving to the hum of crickets and stillness of deep Navajo sandstone.

Our Diné (Navajo) guide Nate expertly illuminated the canyon walls for us with low level lighting to photograph the textures of the canyon and the Milky Way Galaxy above. Or as the Diné refer to the Milky Way Galaxy as “Yikáísdáhá” - meaning something like The Light that Extends into the Night Sky, referring to the cyclical nature of harmony in the universe and a transcendent cultural pathway that guides humans.

One of my favorite things about touring on the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona is despite their more recent austere and complicated history out West, the Navajo have a great sense of humor, are very warm, and use Tourism as a way to share their stories and culture with the world.

The incredible dark and starry skies of Northern Arizona, to me, are another example of their traditional and holistic way of life being preserved into the future.”

📸 derek culver | astro photography adventures White Sands by day already feels otherworldly. By night, it becomes anothe...
09/14/2026

📸 derek culver | astro photography adventures

White Sands by day already feels otherworldly. By night, it becomes another planet.

Beneath one of the darkest skies in New Mexico, the gypsum dunes turn into a natural canvas for the Milky Way, no city lights, just sand and stars ✨

Scenes from White Sands after dark ✨ This Oct 30th you can join Tony Maples and I after dark at White Sands as we teach ...
09/08/2026

Scenes from White Sands after dark ✨ This Oct 30th you can join Tony Maples and I after dark at White Sands as we teach you the art of night photography! While others have to leave our adventures will just be starting capturing golden hour, sunset, twilight, and the night sky above the scintillating white sand dunes of New Mexico!

We have 3 spots remaining! All hotels included. This tour has a lot of time teaching advanced post processing Astro techniques as well.

Feel free to DM, email [email protected], or check out the website for more info: www.blazingheavens.com/photoadventures/2026/white-sands

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