On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions. From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good morning everybody,
And so it is Wednesday, and we’ve got Bill – wahoo!
Enjoy the pictures, we’ll be back tomorrow.
I’m mentioned that star trails are easy to shoot, and they are; however they take hours to shoot and often magnitudes more time to process them. Here are three star trails photos, taken under differing conditions: very dark conditions with no moon to a light polluted sky with a nearly full moon.
Star Trails at Twin Bush
I’ve shot the Milky Way at Twin Bush many times and thought that star trails with the Santa Monica Mountains as a foreground would make a nice photo. The cliffs along Pacific Coast Highway remind me a bit of the Red Cliffs at Red Rock. Prior to shooting at Twin Bush that night I shot the Milky Way at Leo Carillio State Park and met another group of photographers, it turns out they later shot in the hills above where I was shooting and you can see their lights behind the telephone pole at the right.
One of the challenges with processing this photo is the highway in the foreground. The original stacked version contained car headlights shinning into the camera producing glare and airplane trails. I spent several hours reducing these flaws in the photo to get what I thought was an acceptable product.
Star Trails at Red Rock.
Normally, when I shoot star trails at Red Rock I shoot towards the Red Cliffs. This time I decided to shot to the east.
Star Trails over Los Angeles.
Most star trails that I’ve shot have been taken in dark locations. This is the opposite, star trails over Los Angeles with the moon in the sky. Rather than a black sky the sky is more blue and the horizon is dominated by the yellow from the light of the city. This is actually a series of 30 second exposures with a shorter exposure used for the city to capture the detail in the cityscape.
This shot took a little over a hour to shoot, but took about 5 hours to remove the aircraft trails since the land approach for LAX runs east to west just south of Downtown Los Angeles.
John Cole
These pictures are art.
rikyrah
Gorgeous, as always, Bill????
WereBear
Gorgeous stuff! I knew they were long exposures, but didn’t know how long they took in the “darkroom.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@John Cole: Thanks John.
@rikyrah: Thanks.
Actually this is a bit of a repeat performance, they originally ran last week. To freshen up the thread I’ll add one more. This one was shot at the same location as the star trails over LA but from the opposite direction(and a different day).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WereBear: It’s actually a series of 30 second exposures and then they’re pieced together in my “digital darkroom”. If they’re shot in a location with little to no air traffic(say like Red Rock) putting them together is as simple as running though a program, with air traffic(LA or even Joshua Tree) the process requires going though each frame to ID those with air traffic and removing it in Photoshop.
Baud
Beautiful as always.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Thanks much.
Tenar Arha
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Gorgeous.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Tenar Arha: Thanks.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Bill, I think we might need to have a conversation about your understanding of the word “easy”. Something that takes “hours to shoot and magnitudes more time to process” does not sound easy to me!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: I did say “easy to shoot”, as in I set it up and let it shoot for a hour or two. Once I compose the shot and set the exposure parameters, I set the interval program and I’m about 15′ away doing something else. Now depending on the conditions, air traffic, clouds, passing cars…that’s when the post processing can take a lot of effort.
arrieve
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I was pretty sure I’d seen the shot of star trails over LA before, but I’m happy to see it again. All of them are worth seeing multiple times.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@arrieve: The next one is an always crowd favorite, Milky Way pics!
Quaker in a Basement
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Shoot. For a minute there, I thought I had finally achieved the ability to see the future.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quaker in a Basement: Yeah I would try to bank on that knowledge.