City of Rocks, New Mexico

An afternoon stroll, and some star shots at City of Rocks, New Mexico

The star shots were long-exposure. I was trying out a new lens I bought to shoot the aurora borealis (Northern Lights for those of you in Dixie). Guess what? You don't use the same techniques to shoot the aurora as you do for stars. But, having said that, I think we can have some fun on down the road with the new toy.
The camera is a Nikon D40X, the lens is the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm 1:1.4G with no filters. All the pictures had exposure compensation of +0.3 step (no clue when THAT got set). There was some ambient light from a couple of floodlights on the other side of the park office building about 200 yards away, but they weren't in direct line to us, just the glow around the building. Grab a beverage, and let's enjoy a night out of town.

20090814cityofrocks_001	20090814cityofrocks_002	20090814cityofrocks_003	20090814cityofrocks_004	20090814cityofrocks_005	20090814cityofrocks_006	20090814cityofrocks_007
20090814cityofrocks_008	20090814cityofrocks_009	20090814cityofrocks_010	20090814cityofrocks_011	20090814cityofrocks_012	20090814cityofrocks_013	20090814cityofrocks_014
20090814cityofrocks_016	20090814cityofrocks_017	20090814cityofrocks_020	20090814cityofrocks_021	20090814cityofrocks_022	20090814cityofrocks_027	20090814cityofrocks_028
20090814cityofrocks_029	20090814cityofrocks_030	20090814cityofrocks_031	20090814cityofrocks_032	20090814cityofrocks_033	20090814cityofrocks_034	20090814cityofrocks_035
20090814cityofrocks_036	20090814cityofrocks_037	20090814cityofrocks_038	20090814cityofrocks_039	20090814cityofrocks_040	20090814cityofrocks_041	20090814cityofrocks_042
20090814cityofrocks_043	20090814cityofrocks_045	20090814cityofrocks_046	20090814cityofrocks_047	20090814cityofrocks_048	20090814cityofrocks_049	20090814cityofrocks_050
20090814cityofrocks_051	20090814cityofrocks_052	20090814cityofrocks_053	20090814cityofrocks_054	20090814cityofrocks_055	20090814cityofrocks_056	20090814cityofrocks_057
20090814cityofrocks_058	20090814cityofrocks_059	20090814cityofrocks_060	20090814cityofrocks_061	20090814cityofrocks_062	20090814cityofrocks_063	20090814cityofrocks_064
20090814cityofrocks_065	20090814cityofrocks_066	20090814cityofrocks_067	20090814cityofrocks_068	20090814cityofrocks_069	20090814cityofrocks_070	20090814cityofrocks_071

20090814cityofrocks_072

20090814cityofrocks_073

20090814cityofrocks_074

20090814cityofrocks_075

20090814cityofrocks_076	20090814cityofrocks_077	20090814cityofrocks_078	20090814cityofrocks_079	20090814cityofrocks_080	20090814cityofrocks_081	20090814cityofrocks_082
20090814cityofrocks_083	20090814cityofrocks_084	20090814cityofrocks_085	20090814cityofrocks_086	20090814cityofrocks_087	20090814cityofrocks_088	20090814cityofrocks_089