Night photography was always a challenge to me. There are so many factors to get a desired shot that it is sometimes very taxing. Nevertheless every winter I try my luck anyway, as winters bring cool calm wind less and cloud less skies. The cool air also helps in getting sharper celestial views.
So last year (2016) at end of December I went with few friends to a location which is expected to have minimum light pollution. There was no shot that I had in mind, living in the northern hemisphere there is no chance to get a good view of the Milkyway centre during that time. So all of us were almost ready and half expecting to have some star trail shots from this night shoot.
And here is what I got!
Some of my friends and fellow photography enthusiast wanted to know how this picture was made. So here you go friends.
There are two stages of making this picture first being capturing the necessary shots keeping a lose aim on what we want to create finally.
Night photography compounds the same rules of getting a good picture during day composition, light and an anchoring subject. In my mind I did not want to have this just as a simple startrail picture but to have more interest to it. So I stated looking for complementing subjects and right out of darkness I saw this fishing net in the shallows of the river and a line of crap to push the fish towards it. Now that looked interesting and after a few test shots I set my mind to this final composition. For the stars as I was pointing towards South West and my phone app Planit! told me that the star movement will place them right on top of my net. So I was a little optimistic.
Now a few tools of trade that we must have to capture a star trail as I did,
Finally after reviewing the shots on my camera's LCD screen and somewhat satisfied, we called it a night.
First I took all of those 150 shots to Lightroom and did some minor tweaks like removing the Chromatic Aberration and adding a little bit of exposure. Now I took these 150 shots to Starstax and created the startrail with fair bit of Gap filling used. Ones I was satisfied with the trails I exported it to Photoshop as a layer.
On top of that I brought in the 150th shot from that stack of pictures and converted the mode to Linear Dodge with 70% layer opacity. This helped me to bring back some of the static stars into the sky and I masked out the foreground from that layer.
If you remember I mentioned about my light painted foreground frame. Well here is where I brought that in and using a Lights luminosity mask showed only the foreground leading line with 90% layer opacity.
Finally I removed some of the stray lights in the right horizon with another frame from the 150 set using a mask to paint out that area.
And that's all it took to get the final frame that you see today.
I hope this will help you create you own startrail picture. Just remember, the viewer is interested something beyond the technique. A technically strong picture might not be the best one, it also has to have the right recipe of Composition, Light and Subject.
If you think this was helpful to you please leave a comment or critique. You can visit my Facebook page and 500px page to view and review my work.
So last year (2016) at end of December I went with few friends to a location which is expected to have minimum light pollution. There was no shot that I had in mind, living in the northern hemisphere there is no chance to get a good view of the Milkyway centre during that time. So all of us were almost ready and half expecting to have some star trail shots from this night shoot.
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| Star Catch |
Some of my friends and fellow photography enthusiast wanted to know how this picture was made. So here you go friends.
There are two stages of making this picture first being capturing the necessary shots keeping a lose aim on what we want to create finally.
Night photography compounds the same rules of getting a good picture during day composition, light and an anchoring subject. In my mind I did not want to have this just as a simple startrail picture but to have more interest to it. So I stated looking for complementing subjects and right out of darkness I saw this fishing net in the shallows of the river and a line of crap to push the fish towards it. Now that looked interesting and after a few test shots I set my mind to this final composition. For the stars as I was pointing towards South West and my phone app Planit! told me that the star movement will place them right on top of my net. So I was a little optimistic.
Now a few tools of trade that we must have to capture a star trail as I did,
- A camera which can take a intervelometer or has a in built one. I use a Nikon D7200 so I am sorted on that.
- A fast lens, something that has an aperture below f/2.8. For this shot I used a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 which is sharp and gets me the picture I want.
- A very sturdy tripod is an absolute must.
- A determined and calm mind, because you will surely need it. Believe me! :)
- A friend to chit chat to kill time during the exposure or very tasty pack of snacks with hot tea. (...as alcohol does not mix well with photography or anything else for that matter.)
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| One of the 150 shots at ISO1600 12mm f/2.8 for 30secs |
For this shot I set my temperature to 5095 Kelvin shooting in RAW at ISO1600 12mm f/2.8 for 30secs exposure. And I took 150 shots at that same setting with a in-between shot gap of 4 secs. This took my shooting time to 85 minutes.
On a side note which the experts don't tell and I had to learn the hard way is, you have to take a complete black shot of the same frame with the lens cap on, that can be used later in post processing for noise reduction.
On a side note which the experts don't tell and I had to learn the hard way is, you have to take a complete black shot of the same frame with the lens cap on, that can be used later in post processing for noise reduction.
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| Foreground light painted frame, shot at ISO400 12mm f/10 30secs |
And as I had a leading line in my composition so I took a light painted shot of the foreground for safe measure at ISO400 12mm f/10 30secs.
Finally after reviewing the shots on my camera's LCD screen and somewhat satisfied, we called it a night.
This starts the second part of making this picture called Post Processing.
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| Base layer of the complete star trail. |
First I took all of those 150 shots to Lightroom and did some minor tweaks like removing the Chromatic Aberration and adding a little bit of exposure. Now I took these 150 shots to Starstax and created the startrail with fair bit of Gap filling used. Ones I was satisfied with the trails I exported it to Photoshop as a layer.
 |
| Added more stars with a Linear dodged frame of the set. |
On top of that I brought in the 150th shot from that stack of pictures and converted the mode to Linear Dodge with 70% layer opacity. This helped me to bring back some of the static stars into the sky and I masked out the foreground from that layer.
 |
| Foreground interest. |
Finally I removed some of the stray lights in the right horizon with another frame from the 150 set using a mask to paint out that area.
And that's all it took to get the final frame that you see today.
I hope this will help you create you own startrail picture. Just remember, the viewer is interested something beyond the technique. A technically strong picture might not be the best one, it also has to have the right recipe of Composition, Light and Subject.
If you think this was helpful to you please leave a comment or critique. You can visit my Facebook page and 500px page to view and review my work.
Very well explained. What I find best about you is that you explain the idea and the techniques involved, which will help a lot of people who seek knowledge. That calls for a lot of confidence in oneself, as one has to be thorough about the processes involved. I do not find many photographers doing that.
ReplyDelete-Subhadip
Thanks ... may be I am over confident :) but I wing this info. out anyway so that the community can reply back with similar content that I can learn from.
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