Rim Fire Closes Areas of Yosemite National Park

At 10:41 am this morning Yosemite National Park distributed a map of closed areas within the park, generally north of CA-120 and east of Glen Aulin, as shown on this map:

Details of the Yosemite National Park closures may be found at:
http://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/rimfire.htm

On Twitter Cal Fire sent out a tweet on current conditions this morning at 7:35 am:

#RimFire [update] near #Yosemite (Tuolumne County) is now 149,780 acres & 15% contained. http://inciweb.org/incident/3660/ 

Cal Fire's page for incident updates is found at:
http://inciweb.org/incident/3660/

The latest Cal Fire map color-coded to show daily progress of the fire is available at:
http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/photos/CASTF/2013-08-17-1950-Rim/picts/2013_08_26-14.11.21.961-CDT.jpeg

Perseid Meteor Shower 2013

Perseid Meteor Shower August 2013:

Don't watch in this tiny window though... start it, then click "watch on YouTube" at the bottom, then the little gear icon to make it go 1080p or 720p HD, then click on the icon to make it go full screen.  Enjoy!

I have a copy on Vimeo as well in case you might like to compare the two:


Perseid Meteor Shower 2013 from Jeff Sullivan on Vimeo.

Watch this in 720P or 1080P HD resolution. Over six minutes of footage from recent nights in 2013 during the Perseid Meteor Shower. The slower, mostly horizontal lights are airplanes. The brief flashes of mostly vertical streaks are the meteors (a few slower ones are satellites). Many meteors are faint, so you'll only see most of them if you follow the instructions above and change the viewing resolution to HD and expand the video full screen.
For the soundtrack, the timelapse video of the Perseid meteor shower is set to the InFiction String Remix of David Bowie's "Let's Dance", as featured in the recent Kia commercial (used with permission).

All images © 2013 Jeff Sullivan. To license Perseid meteor shower or other time-lapse footage, please contact me. All unauthorized uses will be pursued.

Milky Way Photography Workshop

Milky Way Reflection and meteor at Topaz Lake on the California/Nevada border, 2013

The best time to view the Milky Way in the Northern Hemisphere is close to the Summer solstice June 21, which is coming up fast. My best workshops for capturing the Milky Way will be June 14 and June 29 in Bodie State Historic Park:
http://activesole.blogspot.com/p/bodie-night-photography-workshops-2013.html

I still have a couple of spaces left in each session. The June 29 date may be the better of the two for Milky Way shots, since The moon rises late, so we'll shoot mostly under a dark starry night sky.  As an added bonus, fellow astrophotographer Steven Christenson will be co-leading this one.  We've both won awards for our photography in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest conducted by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in London (the observatory is home of GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, and all GPS coordinates in the world are defined relative to their site).  June 29 is also the same date as the Google+ 2 year anniversary photowalks, so we may offer a free photowalk in the eastern Sierra earlier that day.  Contact me if you'd like to join us!

Milky Way, a set on Flickr.

Bodie Foundation 2014 Calendar, Winning Shot!

Congratulations +Maximilian Laue on your contest-winning shot from our night photography workshop at Bodie last year!
I can't wait to see it on the 2014 Bodie Foundation calendar!

I can't seem to blog your photo provide a URL directly to it, but I can link to my share of it:
https://plus.google.com/104896696773020847048/posts/41fskApuWgE

I'm also thrilled to hear that you can join us again this year, on the dual night/morning sessions Oct 12/13 added today:

June 29th night
August 9th night
August 24 night
Oct 12 night + Oct 13 dawn/interior

Info:
http://www.jeffsullivanphotography.com/blog/bodie-night-photography-workshops/
Registration:
http://www.jeffsullivanphotography.com/blog/

Bodie State Historic Park, a set on Flickr.