A friend of mine, Katherine, has been trying for a while to get me to teach her some of the star photography techniques I've picked up, and eventually she realised that the best way for this to happen was to arrange the whole thing, as waiting for me to become that organised could take some time!
We decided to take advantage of the clear weather in Vancouver, despite a full moon that would limit our ability to shoot anything other than star trails. As Katherine hadn't been to Porteau Cove Provincial Park at night before, and it's a pretty interesting place to photograph (especially if you haven't been there as often as I have!), we headed up the Sea to Sky highway at about midnight.
I decided to try a bit more of an abstract composition for this shot, which is looking vertically up from underneath the gantry structure at the end of the jetty. One side of it was lit up by the moon and the other side was in shadow, which caused an interesting contrast difference, despite the near-symmetrical shape. As Katherine was using her 15-85mm crop-frame lens, she kindly (and bravely, given recent events) lent me her 17-40mm full-frame wide angle lens, as mine still isn't back from Canon.
This is a series of 231 photographs taken at ISO 4000, f/4, for 13 seconds each. For some reason the EXIF data says it was at 40mm, but the lens was definitely at 17mm. These were stacked in StarStax using the 'comet' setting, which causes the trails to fade in, and then I did some additional fiddling in Photoshop.
Despite the full moon and some low-lying mist on the water, the camera had no difficulty in picking up an incredible number of stars, far more than was visible with the naked eye in the relatively bright conditions.
View large to see more detail in the trails. Thanks to everyone for getting two of my photos into the Top 20 last week -- your comments and faves are all amazing and really appreciated!
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
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Very cool. I just downloaded the StarStax update after viewing this and will be checking out comet mode soon! As always, thanks for the instruction and inspiration.
Amazing photograph! I am in awe of your knowledge and skills, and I am very impressed that you so willingly share what you to know to help others... you rank high in my book! Fav!
I really really need to get out to Porteau Cove at night! I would love to give some of this a try, this shot is superb!! Nicely done :) Oh, and fav of course!
FAV....thank you for letting us know how this is done........I'm going to struggle from the start...........the staying up till midnight and beyond!!!!
I recently got the 17-40mm - haven't had much of a chance to get out there and use it properly on travels, but I am liking it so far!