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Star Trails over the Watchtower How-to

Discussion

6 replies
Posted by Jason J. Hatfield on December 9, 2012 at 3:33 PM
Star Trails over the Watchtower How-to
I posted an image last night to 500px of star trails over The Watchtower at Grand Canyon National Park. I got a few requests on my technique so I've shared a blog post on how I created the photograph. I figured some people on the forum might find this useful.

http://500px.com/photo/20192229

http://www.mountainskyphotography.com/content/star-trails-over-watchtower-short-how
Posted by Phillip Noll on December 9, 2012 at 7:24 PM
Outstanding image, Jason. Well thought out and executed! :toast: :toast:
Posted by John Mumaw on December 9, 2012 at 9:10 PM
Yes, indeed! And thanks for the 'how-to'. It was interesting reading your thought processes into creating this aside from sterile tech. specs. For instance, choosing a lower ISO speed was a good move here.
Posted by Don Grall on December 11, 2012 at 10:22 AM
Very well done, Jason. Spectacular subject and treatment. It's interesting that the combined images didn't blow out the tower lighting. The software must have a way of using only some of the images to maximize the light values.
Posted by Jason J. Hatfield on December 11, 2012 at 1:32 PM
StarStax is definitely a great program, I think it's using a type of lighten blend mode.
Posted by Rodney Ninow on December 22, 2012 at 12:25 AM
Great shot and awesome tutorial! How do you locate the north star? It's part of the big dipper, right?
Posted by Jason J. Hatfield on December 23, 2012 at 4:08 PM
You can use the Big Dipper to locate the North Star: the right edge of the dipper points to it.