My take on the Geminids

On Thursday afternoon I drove 5 hours to meet up with Jason Hatfield and Mike Berenson in South Dakota. Our target was in Custer State Park on the Needles Highway, after driving past this rock formation called 'The Eye of the Needle' this past summer I knew I had to come back to photograph it at night. But it needed to be something special. The view faces West, so I knew there was no way to show the milky way behind it. Later in the year I was looking for locations to photograph the Geminids, as soon as I realized that the radiant would be in the Western sky I knew where I needed to go.

Our trip was full of uncertainty due to the heavy cloud cover over the entire region. We nearly bailed on the plan in the middle of Wyoming, the forecasts were looking extremely unfavorable and the clouds still lingered above. We met up with Mike in Lusk, WY and he persuaded us to stick to the original plan. Thankfully, as we entered South Dakota the skies slowly started to clear.

When we arrived in Custer, SD the skies were completely clear of clouds, things were looking up! Then we turned down the Needles Highway. ROAD CLOSED. With the warm weather we've had in Colorado I didn't even think about the road being closed. After a few minutes assessing the situation (freaking out) we realized it was only a mile hike to our location thanks to the gps, disaster averted.

We made our way to the needle and spent several hours light painting the rock formations, watching meteors and BS'ing with good friends.

Bigger version on my site http://www.davidkinghamphotography.com/night/h4f9f23fe#h4f9f23fe

Technical Details:
Meteors/Stars:
30 second exposures at f/2.8, ISO 6400
Composite of 38 images taken over 8.5 hours, 36 for the meteors, 1 for the stars, and 1 dark frame for noise reduction.
The single image of the stars was selected to have the radiant of the Geminids in the upper left corner. The meteors were then layered in photoshop, masked to only show the meteors, and then rotated to correct for change of the radiant's position as it moves through the night.

Foreground:
2 minute exposures at f/2.8, ISO 400
Light painted with a xeon flashlight
Composite of 7 different exposures using different light painting techniques to highlight each rock with dramatic light

I really like imagery you created here David it gives a good sense of the meteor shower. Kudos on the processing, I don't think I could ever spend the time it must have took to do that.

Awesome work David. Ditto on the processing. My computer is running slow just thinking about it.

David, your hard work really paid off, fantastic photograph! Thanks for the technicals.

Another fine version from there.

Exactly what Tom said! A really remarkable sceene well executed, captured and 'developed'.
Did you use your Rokinon lens here?

Thanks guys! John, it was my 14mm Rokinon, love that lens!

Very nIcely done. Glad you didn't give up on the shot!

David, congrats on this fine image being the EarthShots POD

Hi David, I think I prefer your dark, rich with black’s sky here over the other recent meteor images. I also love the subtle meteors which show very well against that dark sky. No need to accentuate those meteors, they look splendid! Your sky seems about as well done as possible. I will recommend pulling out your shadows in the rocks. On my monitor the shadows are pure black and you can’t see the outline of the rocks against your fantastic sky.

Nice shot Dave!

Thanks Kane, I've put in a lot of time developing my methods to get a black sky when I want it. I'll play around with getting a bit more light around the edges of the rocks, it's not easy since they were light painted in complete darkness, not sure if I have any data to even work with. That could be one reason to lighten up the sky a bit....but probably not

This is so cool, David! I agree with Kane's nit--other than that im really impressed by the crafting you put into this.
BTW--you ever need advice on the forecast, give me a holler--one of the perks of buying my ebook

Thanks Stan! Your methods were pivotal in the decision to go up there. I figured out how to access the NAM models on my iPhone using WeatherGeek on the way up there and the humidity models showed fairly clear skies whereas every other model showed overcast, worked out brilliantly!