Bridge and Stars, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Last night at Kirby Cove the weather was balmy. I ate a chicken sandwich from Bakesale Betty’s in the dark and called home to say goodnight to the kids while the timer took care of generating thirteen exposures, each at four minutes and f/5.6 (ISO 100). I had to throw away one of the exposures later because the airplane trails in it were just too distracting.

It’s surprisingly hard to eat a Bakesale Betty chicken sandwich in the dark.

The ambient light from San Francisco made the stars relatively less bright compared to the wilderness, and I wasn’t pointed north so my circles were smaller.

I combined in an eight minute exposure at f/4 to get the details of the beach, so my combined exposure time was about 54 minutes. It’s amazing what happens to lights and motion over this much time, witness the stars, reflections in the water, and if you look carefully the telltale lights of a huge container ship passing through the Golden Gate. (You can see this better in the larger size.)

[Nikon D300, 10.5mm digital fisheye, 12 captures at 4 minutes each and f/5.6, one capture at 8 minutes and f/4, all captures at ISO 100 and tripod mounted, combined in Photoshop using the Statistics script.]