While many UC Davis students spent the three-day weekend shredding the slopes of Tahoe, a few may have seen it look like this at midnight.
This past weekend a few friends and I went on a snow camping trip near Fallen Leaf Lake, south of Lake Tahoe, and I brought my camera along to capture the moments. I planned on experimenting after sunset with long exposures to capture the trail of light left by stars as they orbited around Polaris (the north star). Using a wide angle of 10mm and a large aperture of f/5 I was able to fill the frame with the landscape and light. I did not expect the 201-second exposure to reflect the moonlight off the snow enough to brighten the photograph to the point that it looked like it was taken in the middle of a sunny afternoon. As a result, the photo juxtaposes two aspects of the natural world that are rarely seen in one frame – star trails and a snowy landscape.
For information about planning your own snow camping trip, visit Outdoor Adventures next to the Silo.
