Night

Photo: Door County Star Trails

Star trails from a 12 minute exposure taken on a perfectly dark night at Peninsula State Park in Door County, WI.

Back Story

It’s fairly easy for me to say that this is new crown jewel in my night sky portfolio, no question.

The family and I were up in Door County, WI last weekend as kind of the last peaceful moment before the holidays kick into high gear. Joining us were my wife’s aunt and uncle, who were responsible for us exploring Door County in the first place.

For the last weekend in October, the weather was extremely nice and the skies were incredibly clear for most of our time there. While exploring the state park in Fish Creek during the day, I made a comment on how nice it would be to come back at night and shoot the stars. Well, that’s what we did.

The Setup

After shooting individual 30 second exposures for about a half hour, I decided to break out of that and go a little longer. So I found the north star (which was a little tricky since the sky was just littered with stars, mind you) and shot a 4 minute exposure at ISO 1600.

Liking what I saw after the 4 minute exposure, I decided to expand on that to get what you see here. I dropped down my ISO to 100 (4 stops) and then tripled my exposure time to 12 minutes, shooting wide open at f/4 on my 24-105mm lens.

Even on the LCD screen afterwards, and showing my wife and her family while zooming in, it looked pretty nice. I would have tried going for a 24 minute exposure, but with everyone with me, that would have been too much for me to ask of them. Maybe next time.

Tweaks in Post

It would have been interesting to see how the 24 minute exposure would have came out, since I ended up increasing the exposure in post by 2 stops. I also cooled down the WB a bit to get back to more of a black sky, an the noise reduction in Lightroom helped quite a bit, too. After bumping up the Clarity slider to 100, you have what you see above.

I also had a quick 4×6 print ran off yesterday, and was very happy with how it transferred from my screen to print. Next, I’ll probably try to blow it up more and see how it looks on a grander scale.

Until Next Time…

Even though much of my previous night sky shooting was done in Maui, the conditions there were never as great as I had seen them this past weekend. And who knows when I’ll get to be back with conditions like that again. I may have to wait an entire year, but if that’s what it takes, I’ll do it. I’ll be prepared to be there all night (or at least until the park closes at 11pm).

In any case, this was my first attempt as shooting star trails like this, and I have to say it’s pretty fun.

Photo: Night Skyline

A calm, autumn night along Chicago’s lakefront.

Back Story

This past weekend, we were back out at the Museum Campus in Chicago, to get another take at shooting the Chicago Skyline at dusk and at night. There were a few good images that came out of the evening, including a few where I was testing out a new FL-W filter I picked up recently, but this was the one I decided to feature first.

I was out shooting for only about 90 minutes, and probably could spend another hour or so there next time. 90 minutes may seem like more than enough time, but for awhile there I was shooting panos from one end to the other, and bracketing at the same time. Testing different exposures, I found myself doing one bracketed pano with 8″, 15″ and 30″ exposures each. Round that up to a minute for all three shots, and then factor in about 15 frames (shooting vertically) moving across the lakefront, and you can see the time goes.

Touch of Pink

You may notice that the top of the Sears Tower (yes, I still say Sears Tower) and the nearby buildings look a little pink. Well, that’s because their lights have been switched to pink to support breast cancer awareness month in October. It may only be subtle in this shot, but it was very apparent in person.

– Kris

Night Skyline with an FL-W Filter

Earlier this month, a friend of mine sent me a link to an Adorama Learning Center article by Bryan Peterson about shooting night/dusk shots with an FL-W filter. It looked very promising, so I picked one up (at B&H, ironically, because Adorama was out of stock) and waited for my chance to try it out.

Which takes me to this past weekend, where the weather here in Chicago was extremely gorgeous – again – and more importantly, the winds off the lake were especially calm. That meant, heading back down to the Museum Campus and getting some shots of the Chicago Skyline just after dusk and as night fell.

The After Shot

I know, you’re supposed to start with the before shot, but just check this out:

That’s just about right out of the camera, with the Hoya 77mm FL-W multi-coated filter sitting on the front of my lens. Sure, it’s a little dark, but that’s because I kept the exposure settings the same as the before image below, as to do a straight comparison.

You can easily tell that you lose a little light with the filter, but nothing a quick exposure adjustment can’t fix.

This was a 2 sec. exposure, shot at f/11 and at ISO 200. The same can be said with the before image without the filter, seen below.

The Before Shot

In all fairness, the before shot without the FL-W filter doesn’t look that bad, either. With the calm winds and the 2 second exposure, the water of the lake smoothes out rather nicely, too.

Yet, the color you get from the FL-W filter when switching to a white balance of Daylight really gives you a creative option you otherwise wouldn’t have on location like that.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Although it’s seemingly a night and day comparison already, here’s a quick side-by-side look I threw together with the Diptic App on the iPad:

More Images

I’m only getting started with testing this guy out, admittedly not being able to go out and shoot scenes like this as often as I’d like. The joys of being a new parent.

I do have a few other images from the shoot over the weekend posted on Flickr, which I’ll also be featuring here on the blog in the coming days as well.

We’re also heading up to northeastern Wisconsin this weekend, and there’s at least one or two spots I’m already thinking of shooting with this guy. So stay tuned for those next week.

– Kris

Photo: Big Dipper Redux

Photo: A different look at my Big Dipper image thanks to a cropping suggestion from Andy Beal.

What can I say, there may not be such a think as a “finished” image. After a great tip from Andy in yesterday’s Before and After post, I went back into the darkroom and spun this image out of Photoshop.  Many thanks to Andy for not only identifying the potential for a new look for the original image, but also for taking the time to leave a comment.

Moving Heaven and Earth

Okay, maybe just heaven.

My first attempt at this cropped version was a little off.  If you check the original image, you’ll notice that the right-most star in the Big Dipper constellation was actually captured to the right of the two chairs in the foreground. Now look at this image again.

Bet you wouldn’t have noticed it if I didn’t point it out, eh?

It was pretty easy to do, actually, by just duplicating the layer, moving it to the left and adding a gradient mask to blend it in.

Why Stop There?

I’m leaving this image as-is for now, since I like the simplicity of the scene and they well recognized Big Dipper – which was the reason I shot the scene in the first place.

At some point, I could take it a step further, and instead of the Big Dipper, I could swap it out for this image of the Milky Way I shot on Maui last September. The possibilities – like the universe in this case – truly are endless.

– Kris

Before and After: The Big Dipper

The previous two editions in my Before and After series have featured the use of the Topaz Adjust plug-in for Photoshop.  Sometimes that extra creative step isn’t needed, and the following images demonstrate.  Many times it’s just a few minor tweaks in Adobe Camera Raw that will do the trick.

The Before Image

Most people will recognize that as the Big Dipper constellation, which I captured here over the waters of Sturgeon Bay in Sept. ‘08. It’s a neat little shot, but I wasn’t happy with the orange tint. Also, I had took a few liberties when I cropped this image initially, so I thought there might be something worth bringing back into it on the redux.

The After Image

I took a few different approaches to redoing this image. What I ultimately ended up with was processing the RAW image twice – known as mutli-RAW processing – to preserve some of the darkness in the sky while adjusting some of the foreground elements.

By processing the elements of the scene independently on separately layers and applying the changes using a gradient mask, I essentially keep the best of both worlds and have an image more to my liking with relatively little extra effort.

Thoughts?

For one, I definitely like the detail on the right with it’s color more in check and not gushing orange hues.  However, each time I look at that after image, I still think to myself, “is the foreground too bright?”. Since I save checkpoints at each step in my workflow, it wouldn’t be that difficult to go back and just darken the chairs on the pier just a tad.

Well, what do you think?