Lady Boot Arch, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
This is an image of Lady Boot Arch in the Alabama Hills, located between Lone Pine, California and Mount Whitney. I created the star trails using 49 captures, each capture shot using a 10.5mm digital fisheye for 4 minutes at f/5.6 and ISO 200. I stacked the exposures using the Photoshop Statistics script.
Obviously, my camera was not pointing north—if I had been, the star trails would have appeared circular.
To be able to expose for a combined time of a little more than three hours, I used a direct current adapter plugged into a portable Vagabond II power supply from Paul C Buff. This lithium battery-plus-sine-wave-inverter is intended to power studio strobes and is at sixteen pounds is a bit heavy for wandering around the Alabama Hills at night. But it’s great to know I’m not going to run out of power.
Some “secret sauce”: In a couple of the frames in the composite, I light painted the arch using my LED headlamp. Also, I was in position before it was fully dark, and the tripod did not move, so I was able to Photoshop in some of the arch color from twilight.
This image was shot on a scouting trip to the Alabama Hills region with Steven Christenson in preparation for our night photography and star circle workshop in early November.
timetre
13 Oct 2010Beautiful, as always …
I just love those star trail shots !
Pingback: Photographing Star Trails | Photoblog 2.0
Pingback: Stars My Destination | Photoblog 2.0
Steven Christenson
1 Mar 2011Folks who are looking to power a Canon for the long haul may be interested in my article on Star Circle Academy: “Power All Night Long”
http://blog.starcircleacademy.com/2011/01/all-night-power/
Power is one of the topics of discussion at our Star Circle Academy Workshops.