Photo: (Above) Comet Neowise over oak tree in the Alhambra Valley, Contra Costa County, California; July 2020
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Over the last few weeks an old but familiar refrain could be heard wafting over earthbound spectators: Look! Up in the sky; It’s a Bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s Superman. No… wait, it’s UnderDog.” Nope, it was Comet Neowise gracing the early morning and evening skies. For approximately two weeks as Comet Neowise approached the sun on its elliptical orbit, its tail became more and more visible… sorta. If like me, you lived in a fairly light-polluted suburban area, and/or if you knew exactly where and when to look in the sky, and maybe if conditions were optimal, you could just barely detect the wispy streak of a tail against the stars. But revealing details in the sky using a long exposure time to soak up the dim twilight is one area where a digital camera excels. With a couple of quick test exposures, I was able to lock in the correct part of the sky.
While I was busy tending to a few other things, I didn’t really happen to have a good chance to take a Covid-considerate run to someplace outside of the Bay Area where I knew I might find better subject matter and darker skies. I decided to wait until July 20th when I knew the comet would be visible to the west about an hour after sunset and would be relatively easy to find due to its proximity to the Big Dipper. I also knew the comet would be closest to the sun on July 22nd, meaning its tail would be just about the brightest it would be before starting to fade away again as the comet began racing away from the sun. The comet’s tail is created by heat on the comet surface as it approaches the sun. The tail of a comet can be over a million miles long and is pushed away from the sun by solar winds.
I figured if I didn’t get it right the first time out, I might have a few extra chances before it disappeared again. Of course, if that happened, I’d just have to wait another 6,800 years for another chance to photograph this particular comet. I did photograph comet Hale-Bopp in the 1990s. Haley’s Comet was a complete bust. So Comet Neowise was certainly a worthy visitor to turn a camera toward, and the many pictures I started seeing online were proof positive of that fact.
I spent a number of hours pouring over Google maps looking for a subject and location that would give me a northwest view, a relatively low horizon since the comet was going to be hanging fairly low in the western sky after sunset. I wound up picking a location I had photographed on a number of other occasions, including during the Super Blue Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse in 2018.
I arrived just after sunset and found a few other comet watchers and photographers parked along the road, but it was easy to find a place to be on my own. As the growing darkness of the progressing evening deepened I finally managed to spot the comet and frame up my first shot (seen above) with it hanging over an oak tree. The fog was rolling in from the San Francisco Bay, and the nearby city lights caused the low stratus clouds to glow a bright orange against the cobalt blue sky. Settings: Nikon D800 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 48mm; 10 sec. @ f/4.5 ISO 800
For my second shot, I switched to a slightly tighter vertical crop using the branches of a different oak tree to impart a sense of time, life, decay, and cycles. The fog had started to come in a bit thicker by now, and I tried timing various shots for when I could get a glimpse of the comet appearing out of the moving clouds.
After the fog had completely covered the area where I was, I opted to move to a second location not far from where I go hiking that had a higher elevation so it was above and east of the fog, as well as having an unobstructed view to the northwest. For this shot, I used a 500mm f/4 manual focus lens with my Nikon d800 set to a 1.5 FX crop, making the effective focal length of 750mm. I wasn’t going to worry about getting a perfect shot since that probably wasn’t going to be possible without either using a special mount that counters the earth’s rotation or a super high ISO that I knew would be pretty awful on this camera. I opted for the best balance I could with my equipment which was a four-second exposure using ISO 3200.
All and all, it was a nice first — and only date — with Comet Neowise. I’m happy I got a variation for myself, and I totally can’t wait to do it all again soon. I just have to brush up on combining ancient Egyptian mummification techniques with modern freezing and resurrection sciences. Does anyone know who makes a freezer with a 7,000-year warranty?
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Gary Crabbe is an award-winning commercial and editorial outdoor travel photographer and author based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, California. He has seven published books on California to his credit, including “Photographing California; v1-North”, which won the prestigious 2013 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal Award as Best Regional title. His client and publication credits include the National Geographic Society, the New York Times, Forbes Magazine, TIME, The North Face, Subaru, L.L. Bean, Victoria’s Secret, Sunset Magazine, The Nature Conservancy, and many more. In 2018, The USPS selected a nearly-unprecedented seven of Gary’s photographs to become U.S. Postage ‘Forever’ Stamps as part of the O Beautiful collection. Gary is also a photography instructor and consultant, offering both public and private photo workshops, as well as being a professional Photo Editor and Content Creator.
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