testmeat photoblog

as i was walking down through the forest after watching the sun rise from xiaoliyuanshan lookout in alishan an idea started to formulate in my head. i only had one more morning left before i had to leave to a big city, so i should take advantage of being out in nature and come back here to attempt some astrophotography. there were a couple of issues with this plan: there wouldn't be any train i could take to get me up to the top while the stars were still out so the only way would be to walk, and i would have to set off even earlier as a result. of course these were both eminently surmountable challenges, but ones i wasn't looking forward to. so i set my alarm for 2am, put on the warmest clothes i had and set off in the dark. as expected the uphill forest ascent was relentless, and i was sweating through my layers, but the cloudless sky that i could glimpse through the trees kept me going. i'd decided to head to a different viewpoint than the previous morning, which was a little bit closer, and i hoped would have less people when the sun eventually came up. i setup my tripod, made an educated guess at a composition and started a timelapse going at 4am. it would have been nice if i could have just left it going and relax for the next few hours, however i knew that it would need my constant attention. firstly it was so cold up there that my lens would start to fog up if i didn't regularly clean it. and secondly i would need to change the shutter speed and iso depending on how dark or bright the sky became. the whole endeavour was a lot of work, but wholly rewarding to watch the stars fade into sunrays and then witness the sun peak over the mountain range and shower me in golden light.

i decided to do a double exposure to combine our star with the other stars into one image, there are a couple more of these which you can see on my instagram post. and of course i made a little video of the full three and a half hour timelapse