Day 9 - 18th November 2018
The VIDEO
Kerman is the largest province in Iran. And it’s in the centre of the desert. This desert is registered under UNESCO because Kalut desert is one of the most beautiful deserts.
The archaeologists discovered traces of civilisation dating more than 6000 years ago after potteries were excavated.
The people during those days constructed canals to channel water. As Kerman was really cold, they constructed their houses with tall walls and somehow snow formed into ice and they found ways to store these ice to be used during summer.
They also used to infuse these ice with seeds of promagranade to beautify they to be sold to the rich.
Another attraction in the Kalut desert is the animals - tigers, various types of cats, foxes and wolves- in those days. But due to indiscreet hunting many have been extinct.
During summer, the temperature of Kalut can go up to as high as 70 degrees Celsius.
The sand and dust were very fine, and they mixed well with rain water and over the centuries these accumulate into almost buildings that looked like man-made.
The people built beautiful gardens in the heart of the desert despite a shortage of water, via making full use of the canal system. Each canal acted like aqueduct connecting wells together.
Big cities like Yas, Kerman were built thus, and trees were planted as the ancient inhabitants strived to landscape their cities. Excavations by archaeologists found many artifacts dating back to this period.
Arg e Reyan (Reyan Citadel)
As we drove out to Arg e Reyan (Reyan Cotadel) We saw a snow mountain Haros which is the source of the water around this area.
Arg e Reyan. It was built during the Sassanian empire. Even during the late Kadja dynasty, about 150 years ago, there were still people living in this citadel.
Kadjar dynasty was started after Mohammad Khan Qajar seized power from the precocious Zand dynasty in 1794 and it lasted till just about 100 years ago.
During the Kadja dynasty the capital was moved back from Shiraz to Tehran.
Arg e Reyan was made of mud brick wall. Over the years it was restored many times. It was divided into various sections for the common people, citadel for the government, the bazaar, the silo, the gymnasium etc etc. The whole compound was casted in multiple areas of extreme contrast in lighting- bright light and dark shadows. It was difficult to photograph with such a huge range of lighting.
Adrian led a small group up to the narrow ledge of the wall for a good vantage point. It was not easy and some of the brave ones made it up for their priceless shots of glory.
What again intrigued me was how the mud brick walls held up over the years. The mud brick made it so ancient, the ruins and the broken walls with window and arc frames made for lovely compositions. The blue sky helped bright out the warm colour of the mud walls.
The revolution was in 1978 that was when the name of Persia was changed to Iran. The reason why Iran was chosen was after much consideration and it was actually derived from the word Aryan.
In Iran, they classify their seasons in exact three monthly according to the Iranian calendar. This is the most accurate, according to Soheila, because it follows the sun. Spring and Summer are both 93 days exactly, Autumn is 90 days and Winter is 81 days.
Desert of Kalut
The Desert of Kalut is a listed UNESCO World heritage site. This is a constantly changing geological process where geographical formations called Yardangs (or in the local language, Kalut) are formed by continuous sandblasting and streamlining by the strong wind and the erosions by streams from the occasional rain.
In the desert, there were some trees and these were Nebkhar tamarix trees. Here they could grow as tall as up till 12m tall. Due to the same geological process, sand dunes would formed around the plants and through time, accumulated into Nebkhar mounts.
Star trail shoot at Kalut
By the time we arrived at our vantage point somewhere in the middle of the Kalut desert, it was exactly 4:45pm.
“Ok I want you all to make use of the cracked mud on the ground as patterns and textures and the sand structures in the background to compose,” instructed Adrian.
“Shoot simi ah?” asked Serene blur blur. But very soon she was once again all over the places with her handphone shooting happily. I think this trip must have been the most relaxing photography trip for her because she happy happy can use the rangefinder, happy happy can use her iPhone.
Another short drive, another stop. This time round some bigger sand structures formed over centuries of wind-blown sand mixed with water, eroded, reformed and eroded again, evolving into these gigantic ghostly sand castles. No wonder Soheila said that the people called Kalut the ‘imaginary castles’.
It was later during dinner time when Soheila shares with us that the drought had brought water levels to very low. Deep beneath the earth about 300-400m they could still find water in deep reservoirs but the way Iranians had been wasting their waters some have predicted that they would finish their underground water supply in 30-40 years. Some had suggested tapping into the water sources from the higher mountains and reconstruct an irrigation system of channels to restore water supply. But nothing had come to fruition yet.
I really didn’t know where we were. But we were out there somewhere quite remote. It was later when Adrian started to chase everyone to close shop as it turned dark that he reminded us we were only 300km away from the border with Afghanistan and theses parts were known to have bandits roaming, that we knew we were into something.
“Well, at least now we can say that we were THIS close to Afghanistan,” said somebody, and I concurred laughingly. For Serene and myself, four months ago we were 25km away from the border with Pakistan, and now we were 300km away from the border with Afghanistan, I think we have had enough bordering for some time already.
Like the Kalut, the whole lot of us naturally lined ourselves up as Adrian barked out a repeat of the star trail shooting settings.
Those with DSLR and digital mirrorless camera with built-in intervelometers, and those who brought external intervelometers, were all ready for their star trail shots. For me, armed with only a manual rangefinder and a conventional old-style manual cable release, my best net was to just shoot everything manually using bulb mode.
“Not bad leh,” said Adrian as he passed me. “Even Leica is trying to shoot star trail.”
I totally agree with him. The old M9P’s weren’t really that fantastic when it came to star trails compared with many of the modern DSLRs. But I was game to give it a shot.
“Ok you all can start off with ISO 200, f/5.6 and meter off. Ideally use a shutter speed of 4 minutes to get the trail of the stars,” said Adrian.
Earlier on he was sharing the rule of 500, meaning that on a full frame, one should use 500 divided by whatever was the focal length of one’s lens to derive the minimal exposure time. Thus for my 21mm lens, 500/21 would give me a minimal exposure time of 23.8 seconds, in order to achieve some degree of trailing.
However, Adrian emphasized that for maximal natural effect of the trail, we should aim to expose for as long as four minutes.
From that point onwards I kept laughing inside because all I heard was people calling out for “Adrian, Adrian!”, “Boss,here here! I need help!”, “Adrian, why mine like that? Help!” and Adrian had two hours of non-stop running from one end of the line to the other end back and forth. He must have done at least half a marathon in that two hours.
“Guys, get your framing done first while there is still light, and compare your shots first,” continued Adrian. “Then later as it gets dark, then do a base shot first with your final settings to make sure that your first shot turns out correct. If the first shot is wrong, your whole series will be wrong.”
We were all having fun. I was standing with David to my right and Simon to my left. David was kao-beh-kao-bu-ing ‘how come his shots so dark dark and full of noises and couldn’t see stars’. Not long after that he realizes that his lens cap was still on and we had a good laugh out of it.
Simon was really the Fuji expert and he gave Fann a whole lot of help finding her built-in intervelometer. But unfortunately for Fann’s fujifilm camera, the longest shutter speed, even on bulb mode was only 30 seconds. But still worth a try.
Adalyn on David Low’s right was very cute. She had no cable release so she was joking that she had to rotate fingers to press and hold her shutter button to make sure they did it cramp up!
I started off with 30 seconds exposures and slowly increased my shutter speed to one minute, and later to two minutes. Even at two minutes I found very little movement of the stars, understandably because my lens was really wide at 21mm. In retrospect I should have just used a 35mm. That would have given me more obvious trailing. The other problem with my M9P was, each time I release my shutter, it had to do a two minutes noise reduction rendering which I could not turn off. So it wasn’t ideal.
We were hoping that no cars would come by with their headlights blaring that would spell the end to our star trail shots. But several cars did come by and we all shouted out at each other to cover our lenses in front with our palms, black cards or whatever we had. That was great fun, first time using the ‘black card’ technique in real life.
We started our star trail shooting around 6pm when it finally turned dark. The moon was behind us which was to our advantage. And surprisingly it was not a cold night. We had a swell time with Serene and the drivers serving us tea and coffee from the coach a short distance away.
The whole actual exercise of shooting lasted only about one hour plus because 7pm plus was a little late already. We needed a three hour drive back to Kerman to make it time for dinner.
I didn’t think I manage to get any decent star trailing. But between Fann, myself and (I was sure) many of the rest of the group, we all had a swell time.
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