The (simple) Story Behind The Photo

I was looking through my photos from my trip to the California coast and Big Sur last December, and I came across a photo that I barely remember taking. I’m assuming I’m not the only one that goes through their photos (like I did after the trip) and heads straight to the photos that they know were some of their favorites just by looking at the thumbnails in a grid view. The problem with that is sometimes you miss photos that may be really good because they don’t immediately jump out at you as a small thumbnail. That’s exactly what happened here.

(you really need to click on the photo to see it larger)

The Story
I woke up one morning to shoot sunrise along the Big Sur coastline. I was above the fog layer and wound up chasing photos for about 10 miles down the coast, stopping constantly to shoot different views. As the sun came up I was driving into some fog and this is what I saw ahead of me. Something about the backlit trees, dappled light, god beams and angle of the road made me think “Wow, that looks cool!”. I debated on whether to turn around or not, and I actually made it to the bend in the road you see in this photo before I did a U-ey and went back to the view you see above.

The Gear
The gear was really simple here. It was my Nikon D800 with my Nikon 16-35mm lens. Aperture was f/16 and shutter speed was 1/45 second. No tripod (although I probably should have at 1/45 second, but I think I propped my camera on the roof of the car), no filters, no nuttin’. I just got out of my car. Snapped about 10 photos from different angles and got back in. The whole process couldn’t have taken more than 2 minutes from the time I decided to turn the car around.

So… the question of the day… does that ever happen to you? One of your favorite photos from a trip is nothing like what you thought you’d get when you embarked on that trip? Thanks for stopping by. Have a good one!

The Story Behind The Photo – Racetrack Playa In Death Valley

Back in January, I took a trip with some friends to photograph Death Valley. One of the key places I wanted to get to while there was the Racetrack Playa or simply, The Racetrack. It’s a valley area where the ground forms these mosaic polygonal patterns. You can read more about it here. Anyway, the Racetrack held up to the hype I’ve heard about it from other photographers and their photos, and the shot you see here is one of my favorites from the evening we were there.

(click on any photo in the post to see it larger)

The Drive Out
The drive out to the Racetrack takes between 2.5 – 4 hours depending on where you stay in Death Valley. For us, it was close to 4 hours including stops at some places of interest along the way. The hardest part of the drive is the 28 mile rough gravel road where you can’t go that fast. You don’t “need” a 4WD vehicle but I wouldn’t be crazy about doing the drive without one. The first stop of interest along the drive out to the Racetrack is Ubehebe Crater. It’s pretty cool to look at but not very photographable. For me, it was enough to just snap a quick iPhone picture of it.

The next stop is Teakettle Junction. It sounds like a big juncion but it’s basically just a fork in the road, a wood sign and a few tea kettles handing off the sign. Here’s what’s funny about Teakettle though. It’s got cell service! By this point you are litterally out in the middle of nowhere. Not only cell service but I had 4G internet speeds too. Now, you have to understand. By this point in our trip, we could barely get any service and internet for 2 days. So to be out in the middle of nowhere and actually have cell service was pretty ironic. We stopped there for about 20 minutes. Not for the views, but mostly to catch up on phone calls to loved ones and social media updates

Arriving At The Racetrack
When you get to race track, you definitely know you’re there. In fact, you can see it from a distance. It’s this large flat area between the surrounding mountains. There’s one pull out area to park, but if you keep driving there’s another (and better one) about 1/4 mile down the road.

We were there about an hour or so before sunset so we had plenty of time to get acquainted with the area and figure out where to shoot. You’re not supposed to drive on the playa, but unfortunately it appeared that some one had. There were tire tracks everywhere near the parking lot, so you had to walk the better part of 1/2 mile to get away from them.

Finding A Rock
The draw to the Racetrack is the sailing stones. These are stones that fall on to the playa from the nearby hills. Then (apparently as it’s never been seen or filmed), it rains on the playa and makes it slippery enough for the high winds (up to 90 mph) to blow the stones along the playa. This leaves the tracks behind the stones, and when you find a cool looking/shaped track, it makes a nice foreground for the photo. Here’s one I took while the sun was going down behind the nearby mountain. At this point, I was still pretty close to the parking lot. probably only 1/4 mile away.

It was pretty cool though, because after the sun went down where I was, the rest of the playa still had sunlight. So I picked up my tripod and did a slow jog across the playa to get a few more vantage points of the sun going behind the hills. I was able to do this 2 more times before I had nowhere else to run.

Twilight (or The Blue Hour)
Interestingly enough, the photo for this post was taken about 15-20 minutes after the sun had set. I’ve found more and more lately, that twilight (or the blue hour) photos seem to be my favorites from a photo shoot. And I have to say, on the Racetrack it was amazing. The whole area turned this blue-ish magenta color. The playa had this purple sheen across it, and it was simply beautiful to see the colors. I found a rock with a nice curved track behind it and started shooting. I was even able to still get a little bit of color in the clouds in the sky.

The Settings and Gear
Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 16-35mm
Aperture: f/16
Shutter Speed: 1/2 second
Tripod: Really Right Stuff TVC-33
Ballhead: Really Right Stuff BH-55

Post-Processing
The post processing on this photo was a little more difficult. The sky was brighter so I had to darken it with the Graduated Filter in Lightroom. The ground was too dark so I had to lighten it up a little. Mainly though, I had to bring this in to Photoshop to select the rock, put it on it’s own layer, and use the Shadows/Highlights adjustment to make it brighter.

Lessons Learned
For starters, I wouldn’t consider this a lesson as much as a warning to anyone who heads out there. It’s dusty. We knew it was dusty so we kept our gear covered, but here’s a photo of my buddy Brian’s pants when we got back. And another one of the back of the jeep. There was a layer of dust on EVERYTHING!

The shoot actually went as planned. We stayed for about 2 hours after sunset and did lightpainting and star photos. A little bit of the Milky Way was showing, but not too much. It got kinda cold but we were dressed for it. At one point the temperature reading on the car read 16 degrees. After we drove out for a while it worked it’s way over 20. My granola bars that I brought for a snack were frozen solid but again, it wasn’t too bad since we were dressed for it.

If I could do it again, I’d stay overnight and be there to shoot sunrise too. There’s not really a camping area but people spend the night in their cars all the time. In fact, we met some one that night that was doing just that. Other than that, I think things went pretty well. I was happy with my final photo, and I was happy with the variety of photos I had since I moved around quite a bit and didn’t get stuck just shooting one rock for an hour.

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a good one.

Night Photography With The Milky Way (and what I learned)

A few weeks ago I posted about what I learned on my first night star photography shoot. Well, the day after I did that shoot, I got the chance to do another one.

Getting In To Bryce Canyon Late
I was meeting the group I was with at Bryce Canyon, Utah. They had already driven up earlier in the day and I came up later that evening when it was already dark. I got to the hotel room, and my buddy RC was already checked in. It was around 10pm and I was beat from getting up early and driving and shooting all day. But RC and a bunch of people from the group (the workshop he was teaching in) were heading out for a star trail shoot. Personally, I don’t like star trails, so I said I was going to stay back, edit some photos and get some rest for sunrise the next morning.

15 Minutes Later
About 15 minutes after they left, RC texts me and all it says is “Drive here…. now!!!”. I texted back and said “Really??? – I’m beat!”. He replied with “Get out here. Now!”. Knowing that RC and I share the same taste in night and star photos, I figured I better listen to him so I drove out. Luckily it was only about 15 minutes away from the hotel.

My First WOW Moment
Okay, so I arrive at the location. First off, it’s pitch black. I mean so dark you can’t see 2 feet in front of you. I knew the group was right there, and all I could do was follow voices since they were all taking photos, and I didn’t want to turn my flashlight on and screw things up. So I eventually set up my tripod and get settled. It was at that point where I first looked up. WOW! is the only thing that comes to mind. I’d never seen so many stars in my life. I grew up in New Jersey, fairly close to NYC so I definitely didn’t see them as a kid. And while I’ve been to many nice places before, I never really paid that much attention to the stars. But this was magnificent!

My Second WOW Moment
RC and I had just finished saying that we wished we were able to see the Milky Way better the night before, when we were shooting in Monument Valley. Well, that’s exactly why he called me out there, and insisted that I go. When I looked up to see all of the stars you saw this beautiful “milky” gas-like area right in the middle of the sky. While I may have exaggerated about never seeing so many stars, I’m not exaggerating about this. I had literally never seen this before (only in photos). And from the research I’ve done about photographing the Milky Way, everything I’ve read said that most people rarely see it with the naked eye because of light pollution. I’m sure if you live in an area that’s really dark and removed from cities, you may see something like it more, but most people don’t. And I have to say, it was breathtaking.

My First Shot – The Foreground Silhouetted
So I framed up my first photo, using the techniques I learned the night before. We shined a bright light on to the rocks in front of us to give a place for everyone’s camera to lock focus. I pretty much set my camera on Manual mode, 15-20 second exposure and jacked the ISO up to see what I got. After one or two shots I was dialed in and had the stars sharp and in focus. But the photo was lacking something. The silhouetted rocks and trees were nice, but it just seemed a little too, well, dark.

(click to see the image larger)

A Happy Accident – More Foreground Helps
Earlier, when I arrived, I parked my car and had my foot on the brake. The brakes lights cast some light on to the rocks in front of us and it turned out that it looked really cool in the photo during a long exposure. So what did we do? What every photographer would have done right? We put a guy in a car and light-painted with brake lights. First we had him simply aim the back of the car toward the rocks, but that didn’t work. So then we had him pull forward so the back of the car was facing toward the rocks. The front of the car eventually went off road and started going into a ditch. It almost worked because it cast the light upward more, not not enough. If he went any further he may have plunged to an ugly death on the rocks below. So we switched gears (figuratively and literally) and had him ride up and down the road (closer to the rocks) tapping his brakes every so often. Perfect!

(click to see the image larger)

How To Know Where The Milky Way Is?
There’s lots of night sky star apps out there. But not all of them show you where the Milky Way is. One of the apps I found works good is called Go Sky Watch. It’s a great looking app and it shows you where just about every possible thing you could want to see in the night sky is. One feature I really like is that it has a Red Light mode for night viewing. For $3.99, it’s definitely worth it.

Camera Settings
I wrote about setting up to shoot at night in the last post, and nothing really changed here (other than adding some light in the foreground). But here’s the settings:

Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 16-35mm
Aperture: f/4
Shutter Speed: 15 seconds
ISO: 3200

Lessons Learned
Besides the lessons I learned the night before about shutter speeds, ISO and exposure, I learned a few more things this evening.

1. I’m not a big vertical shooting guy, but I find that vertical really works for Milky Way photos. I guess because of the angle of it from the location we’re at, it tends to run vertically in the sky.

2. Foreground helps. Silhouettes are good, but for me personally, seeing more foreground really helps. If you watch Dave Black’s new class on Kelby Training Online, about light painting landscapes, he goes over some lights you can get to shine on whatever happens to be in your foreground. If you’re into shooting at night, I’d suggest picking them up or something similar. It can totally transform a night star photo.

3. If you stay in bed, your hotel room or at home, then you can 100% guarantee you won’t get the shot. I owe a big thanks to RC for convincing me to get out there.

4. Dress warmer if you’re out there at night when it’s cold. Nothing can kill a photo shoot like being cold. It got to a point where I simply didn’t want to shoot anymore because I was so cold. It was almost impossible to be creative. I was dressed just fine for our sunrise and sunset shoots. But I hadn’t planned on being out there at night.

Post Processing
The post-processing work was pretty simple. One of the things I learned from the previous night’s shoot was that I could lower my ISO (to get less noise) and increase the Exposure in Lightroom/Camera Raw later, to get the photo bright enough. It works like a charm. You can get a full two-stops of added exposure (with my Nikon D800 files) with LR/ACR and not hurt the image whatsoever. Another change I made was to the white balance. I added a little blue on the Temperature and some magenta on the Tint slider. Finally, I added some Clarity. The Milky Way LOVES Clarity. But I used the Adjustment Brush to add it to the Milky Way only, not the rest of the stars. If you simply add clarity to the whole image it starts looking too noisy.

Well, that’s it for today. I’m really digging the star photography stuff and can’t wait to get out there and try again. Hope you enjoyed. Have a good one

Toronto Skyline Photo

I’m teaching my Lightroom seminar today to an almost sold-out crowd of close to 600, here in Toronto (thanks Toronto!), but I did manage to get out and take some touristy photos after I arrived on Sunday. Whenever I go to a city, I try to make it a point to take a photo of the skyline (if they have one) or something unique to that city. Personally, I actually like the typical touristy spots too. At least when it’s my first time to that city. I find whatever the “usual” spot is, tends to be one of the best, so that’s where I head first.

This photo is from Toronto Island. You take a 10 minute ferry ride over to it, and it’s really cool place. I wish I was here when it was warmer because it looks like a great place to spend the day and explore. Anyway, I headed out to get there by sunset, but the sun went behind a bank of clouds before that happened. That’s okay though, because I tend to like city skylines during twilight the best. That’s when the sun scatters it’s light around the clouds and gives off lots of blues and oranges and magentas. Plus, you can see the lights in the buildings better than when the sun is still up.

Oh, and the detail on this photo is just sick! You’d be amazed if you saw the full 7000 pixel image on my laptop screen. It almost looks 3-D. So make sure you click on the photo below to see it larger.

(click to see photo larger)

A Little Long Exposure Action!
The only other thing I did differently here is I used a neutral density filter. I didn’t use the Lee Big Stopper that I’ve written about before because it was too dark. My shutter speeds were getting too long with it. So I used a 3-stop ND filter to slow the shutter speed down enough to blur some of the clouds and the water. One of the things I like to do with static subjects, like a skyline, is add some motion. You can’t, of course, blur the buildings because that wouldn’t look right. But blurry clouds, for me, help add that dynamic feeling to the photo. And I really don’t care for choppy water (it was windy last night – and did I mention cold ), so the longer exposures help smooth that out as well.

Photo Details:
Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VRII
Cable Release: Vello Shutter Boss Cable Release
Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 45 sec.
ISO: 100
Tripod: Gitzo Traveler
Ballhead: Really Right Stuff BH-55

Thanks for stopping by. If you’re at the seminar today make sure you come on up and say hi. Have a good one!

What I Learned On My First Star Photo Shoot

I’m on my way back from a quick trip out west to shoot Monument Valley, Page Arizona and Bryce Canyon. I’ve always been interested in night photography and star photos, but it’s pretty hard to do living where I live in Florida (because of light pollution). So while I was out there I took the opportunity to do some late night shooting.

Note: Make sure you click on each photo to see it larger

The First Location
For my first try at shooting the stars, I got myself a room at the Monument Valley View hotel. It’s a hotel right in the heart of Monument Valley and it’s rooms have balconies that look right out into the valley. It was such a cool view. So a few friends (RC, John “the snake” Barrett, and Chuck Barnes) came over and we all set our tripods out on the balcony for some shooting. It was actually a great setup. I could shoot and look at my photos on the laptop to figure out what to fix (since it was my first time).

Here’s a poorly stitched iPhone photo where I moved too fast for it to shoot correctly. But it still gives you a good idea of what the view was from the balcony

The First View
The view was awesome. Part of what I find (from looking at photos that inspire me) makes good star photography is having an interesting foreground. You’re generally not going to see too much detail. In fact, a lot of star photos I see, show the foreground as a silhouette. That’s why it’s even more important to pick something interesting. What better foreground then the scenery at Monument Valley? And the best part about it was that the view was right on my balcony.

(Here’s one of the first photos I took. You can see a hint of the Milky Way as well as the moon starting to rise in distance)

The First Shoot – Shutter Speed
Okay, I knew some basics going into this. First, I knew that I wanted to be shooting in Manual mode so I could set everything exactly as I needed. I knew that one of the most important parts of star photography is a shutter speed that doesn’t blur the stars. See, if the shutter stays open too long then the stars appear to move, and look blurry. It’s not an exact science, but depending on which way you’re facing, that shutter speed is between 15-30 seconds. So my first tests were to find out which shutter speed worked here. In this case, I found 15-20 seconds was the sweet spot. At first though, I did think 30 seconds was good from looking at the LCD. But that’s why it was such a benefit to have the laptop nearby for my first shoot – so I could load the photos immediately and really zoom in and look at what’s going on. At 30 seconds, you could tell the stars were blurred.

(Blurry Stars)

The Lens
Another thing to keep in mind is that most people I find shoot star photos with a wide angle lens. I used my Nikon 16-35. So those numbers typically work well for wide focal lengths. But if you zoom in, then those shutter speeds need to be even faster. There’s technical formulas to figure it out, but honestly, I find it easier to just do some test photos. The shutter speeds are short enough (somewhere between 5-15 seconds) that you probably won’t spend much more than a minute or two figuring it out. And even if I knew the formulas, I’d probably still do test photos anyway

The Rest of the Gear
Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 16-35mm
Cable Release: Vello Shutter Boss Cable Release
Tripod: Really Right Stuff TVC-33
Ballhead: Really Right Stuff BH-55

The Aperture
Once you figure out what shutter speed is right, then you need to start working on the other aspects of exposure. For most star photo shoots, you want to choose the lowest f/stop number that your lens will give (widest aperture). For me and my Nikon 16-35 f/4, I chose f/4. If I had a lower aperture setting I would have definitely used it (the other guys were using a 24-70 f/2.8 lenses so they used f/2.8).

(Here’s a photo of the moonrise. It actually looks almost like sunrise doesn’t it?)

Now, that’s very different from what we usually think with landscape photos. We usually want to shoot at f/11, f/16, or even f/22 to get the most depth of field and keep everything sharp. That’s great when shutter speed doesn’t matter and your subject isn’t moving. But remember the whole thing on shutter speed I just mentioned? Well, since the stars are moving (well, I guess technically the earth is really moving) you need every trick you can get to keep your shutter speed down around 15-30 seconds. So that’s why we go with a wide aperture setting. Remember, in this case, there’s not much foreground detail so you’re mainly concerned with getting the stars sharp.

ISO
The next part of the equation is ISO. Here’s a quick recap first. We’re in Manual mode right? Shutter speed is now fixed at 15 seconds. We know that can’t change or the stars will be blurry. Aperture needs to be at the lowest setting your lens will allow so that your photo won’t be underexposed (remember, you’re in complete darkness so 15 seconds really isn’t that long of a shutter speed). The only other variable here is ISO. If you keep your ISO low (100 in my case), the photo is underexposed and you barely see anything. So what do you do? Raise the ISO. Again, it’s not an exact science. Though I’m sure somebody knows another technical formula you can use, I found doing test photos was simple and quick. First, I tried 200 and that was too dark. So was 400, 800, 1600. I finally landed on 3200 and got a properly exposed photo.

(Here’s a photo right before sunrise, about 5 hours after the previous photos were taken. Yeah, this star shooting stuff and sleep don’t go together )

Focussing
For me, this was probably the hardest part. When everything is dark and there’s no moonlight to light anything, you basically have nothing for your camera to lock focus on. So I set my camera to manual focus and and focussed the lens at infinity. I took some test photos and that wasn’t quite sharp so I backed off just a bit from infinity and that seemed to nail it. Depending on the scene you’re shooting you can also try live view on your camera, but it was literally pitch black where I was shooting so live view didn’t work.

Lessons Learned
As with anything, there were some lessons learned along the way.

1. First and foremost, I learned what the general settings were. So the next time I shoot, I’d immediately set my Shutter Speed to 15-20 seconds. My Aperture would automatically go down to it’s widest setting. I’d probably try to borrow a wide f/2.8 lens from some one too. I love my 16-35 for landscapes but it only goes down to f/4 which means you need to crank up the ISO more to offset it. I’d immediately set my ISO to at least 1600 and do a test to see if I needed to go higher. So basically, my camera settings and technical stuff would be good to go in about a minute, and I could quickly start concentrating on composition and being creative.

2. Use a cable release or self timer. Your tripod and camera need to be absolutely still. I just picked up a Vello ShutterBoss cable release from B&H photo and it worked great.

3. If you don’t have a laptop nearby, then make sure you zoom in (way in) on the photos to make sure the stars aren’t blurred. I’m telling you, this is huge. When you’re looking at your LCD without zooming in, even the blurriest of star photos looks sharp.

4. Obviously noise is a problem with higher ISOs. Since I had the luxury of having my laptop nearby, I did an experiment. I tried lowering my ISO to 1600. The photo was definitely underexposed, and you couldn’t see the stars and sky like you should be able to. So I opened the photo in Lightroom (or Camera Raw) and increased the Exposure setting. It looked perfect! So rather than settling for a noisier photo at 3200 ISO, I decided it would be better to not get it quite right in-camera, and take advantage of just how good Lightroom and Photoshop are when it comes to adjusting Exposure.

5. Chances are you won’t be able to see anything through your viewfinder. So composition is basically a guessing game. If that’s the case, once thing that helps get your camera level is the virtual horizon feature that some cameras have. Get familiar with it and exactly where it is in the menus.

What About Star Trails?
I figure somebody reading this is probable wondering about star trails. You know, the photos where the stars form a streak across the sky (here’s some examples from 500px.com). For me personally, I don’t like star trails. To me, it’s kinda like infrared. Photographers love it, but the rest of the world looks at it and wonders why the trees are white and the skies are black. People don’t view the sky in long exposure, so when they look at those photos they wonder if it’s a bunch of shooting stars or did the camera move or something like that. Photographers know it’s cool because we know the work the went into it. But most people don’t see it that way. Now, you may totally love star trails. That’s perfectly fine. But for me, it’s just not my cup of tea.

Part 2?
Here’s a teaser photo for next week (see below). You may have noticed at the beginning of this post I wrote “First Location” and “First View”. That’s because I actually did two shoots while I was out there. The second location was a bit different. First, we light-painted the hills and trees and the Milky Way was actually in view. So we had to contend more with focus and exposure. But I figured I’d write about that in a post early next week so stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a good one!