"Murmur of a Sigh" newest release from Bodhi Smith

Entitled, "Murmur of a Sigh," this is my newest release from my Easter Island (La Isla de Pascua or Rapa Nui) series of compositions. 

I captured this composition during my recent trip to the island a few months ago at the end of December and beginning of January. As it turns out, this was my last picture taken in the calendar year of 2014. Looking back, this is really a mighty nice image to cap off what was truly a very, very good year for me. 

For this image, I again traveled from the town of Hanga Roa where we were staying across the island to the Tongariki Ahu (ceremonial platform) to try to capture these magnificent moai (statues) under the stars, and then stick around to be hopeful of a stellar sunrise. I got the former, but not the latter on this morning. But the things I got to see, memories to behold which no camera could bring justice to, emblazoned images found only in the recesses of my brain, sights to behold for my eyes only on that morning...this all just left me longing for the moment in this picture with a big sigh (and hence the image's title). 

This composition is really a segue image between a full blow starry sky and a morning sky with a glowing sun. In this image you see the longest rays of the sun starting to awaken the sky and wispy clouds, but you still can catch a fleeting glimpse of the brilliant stars of the southern hemisphere before they go to sleep for the day. It is a departure from my ultra long exposures into the world of just a few seconds of exposure, but is still retains my dreamy style...the impression I am trying to give is of elegance that routinely wakes up every morning like clockwork; its excruciating exquisiteness repeated, over and over, day after day, year after year, and all the same while being unbeknownst to itself; the beauty goes to sleep at the end of the day to rise and shine and repeat it all over again, never knowing how discerningly lovely it really is...<sigh>

I can only hope that you enjoy this image a fraction of the amount I enjoyed being there to witness and capture this image...

Camera Settings: ISO-1250, 24mm at f/1.4 for 4 seconds at 5:30am this past New Year's Eve at about one hour before sunrise. 

I hope this message and image find you well.

peace,
D. "Bodhi"

‪#‎LeeFilters‬ ‪#‎Dolica‬ #Tripods ‪#‎Nikon‬ ‪#‎D800‬ ‪#‎Nikkor‬ #24mm ‪#‎BodhiSmith‬ ‪#‎LongExposure‬ ‪#‎expressionist‬ ‪#‎Impressionist‬ ‪#‎Surreal‬ ‪#‎EasterIsland‬ ‪#‎SouthPacific‬ ‪#‎Ocean‬ ‪#‎Nightscape‬ ‪#‎Stars #Moai #Tongariki #‬RapaNui #Isla #Pascua 

New Image Release from Bodhi Smith: "Rastaban"

This new composition is entitled, "Rastaban," and was captured two weekends ago when friend and fellow photographer, Chip Morton, and I went out into the Anza-Borrego desert in Southern California to shoot the metal sculptures of Ricardo Breceda under the canopy of the night sky. Pictured here under the stars is one giant sculpture that Breceda created north of the town of Borrego Springs that has the impression of of being part Serpent and part Dragon that serpentines underground and above ground (with the appearance of going under the road)...

This image gets its name as a reference to the prominent Draco constellation in the northern sky which is the constellation of a dragon/serpent. Arabic in origin, "Rastaban" means dragon's head and is the brightest star in the dragon's head part of the constellation of Draco.

Btw, Chip worked "extra" hard to help me with this shot--he set up the lighting for me and then went back to the Xterra to catch some extra zzz's and slept until I was through... :0

To keep the landscape orientation and eventually make the composition almost square, I used Adobe Photoshop to PhotoMerged two landscape images, one directly above the other, to permit for extra starry sky above the image that could not have been captured within a single frame without losing resolution.

Camera settings: ISO 1250, 24mm at f/1.4 for 15 seconds taken at 11;20pm on 10/25/2014

I hope this message and composition find you well.

peace,
D. "Bodhi"

"Quietus" a new image taken in the Anza-Borrego Desert

This new composition is simply entitled, "Quietus." This term is often synonymous with "a release from life or death" but I have always associated with meaning "anything that eventually ends"... I apply this term to what happened to the dinosaurs and hence my choice for the title of this image...especially since the metal dinosaur sculptures pictured here under the Milky Way look to be in a firestorm.

The famous dinosaurs ruled this earth for over 100 million years before their reign eventually ended and they suddenly died off. Many theories exist as to why a massive extinction happened on earth about 65 million years ago that caused the demise of most life at the time.

The most popular theory rationalizes that a huge asteroid crashed into the earth causing a massive fire explosion that generated such a cloud of dust around the earth that sunlight was blocked out for almost a year, killing off plants that needed the sunlight to survive. A large scale domino effect of animals that lived off those plants subsequently could no longer survive and died off, followed by predators that lived off of those animals dying off, etc. The dinosaurs were so large that they needed the most food to survive, so their fate was sealed, and they all died off as a result. Smaller animals, such as the mammals and birds, made it through the tough times and exist as what wildlife we see around us today.

So, this is another new image captured in the Anza-Borrego desert last Saturday evening. It is highlighting two metal T-Rex sculptures by Ricardo Breceda that are facing off under eternal stars and the Milky Way that appears to be afire.

To tie in with my title of "Quietus" and the demise of the dinosaurs,I wanted the impression of fire to be in this image along with the emotion of the dinosaurs, so I took the artistic liberty of changing the colors of the Milky Way here to be more red-orange and flame-like. it was quite easy as the lower part of the capture was already yellow as a result of the light pollution from the San Diego Metropolis to the west.

I need to give Chip Morton a call out and thanks for helping me to light-paint the sculptures correctly in this image...to get the lighting just the way I wanted, it was a two person job, and I would not have been able to do it by myself.

And Chip paid a bit of a price of pain at this spot when we were originally setting up for the shoot. As it was dark, and as it was in the desert, by accident, he walked briskly into a cactus (close to the T-Rex sculpture on the left) hard enough to get his lower leg impaled with a numerous cactus spines. He was making all sorts of crazy noises of pain, so much so that originally, I honestly thought he was joking around. of course, he was not (for a change)...One of the quills drove in pretty deep, and I had to help pull it out extremely cautiously to make sure it did not break off in his ankle--which would have cause numerous complications that probably would have ended our evening early. So I guess you could accurately say on this night, Chip took one for the team...OUCH.

Camera settings: ISO-1250, 24mm at f/1.4 for 15 seconds captured at 8:45pm on Saturday 10-25-2014.

I hope this composition and message finds you well.

peace,
D. "Bodhi"