Quivering night

Excellent technique and beautiful subject. the side light works perfect here

Nice lighting, Vincent. I find the star trails just a tad overpowering as presented, but I like the effect combined with the otherworldly trees growing there.

It was probably quite warm out, but I should mention I find that noise and/or dead pixels present no problem at all with 4-5 hour single exposures on my 5D II or 1Ds III if the ambient air temperature is in the 0-5 Celsius range. Below that batteries die to quick and above that the sensor heats up too much resulting in dead pixels. The effect derived from a single exposure results in much less work and more subdued star trails, like you'd get with film.

Not to hijack the thread or anything, but I've included a crop to illustrate what I'm saying. Attached is a 100% crop from a 4.5 hour SINGLE exposure with the 1Ds III. The air temperature was roughly 0 degrees Celsius throughout. The image was shot with the Canon 1Ds III, Nikon 14-24, ISO 100 and exposed as far to the right as possible before being darkened in processing. There was no noise reduction applied and the image has extremely little noise and dead pixels. In fact, you'd get more dead pixels with an improperly exposed 1-minute exposure at the same ISO! It is not sharpened or otherwise altered for web. Exposing to the right is very important, as is battery life. 4.5 hours is about the max for one battery in those temps on the 1Ds III.

I like the star trails. I like the trees. I'm not sure I like them together. they almost fight each other for the attention in this image.
Maybe if there had been only one tree in the frame it would work better for me. Or if the star trails had been more subtle. Still, it's an incredible image with a great deal of energy and 'pop'.

This looks great Vincent - love the side lighting.

My first reaction to this was WOW. I love the sidelighting on the trees. I love the setting including the boulders & the trees. The star trails are overpowering IMO. As I read the technical information I was wondering why you shot 64 5 minute exposures to blend rather than leaving the shutter open for a longer period of time? Excellent imagination and vision to compose and execute this image. I have done very little with star trails and would like to better understand the decision to blend multiple exposures or shoot a 4.5 hour exposure as Mark Adamus referenced.

I really appreciate anyone who gets these great night time images. I like this image. The side light adds nicely to it. I would have been interested to see a comp. with the star trails centered with these trees in the foreground.

Just awesome

aF

p.s. per marc and tech info. was your long exposure noise reduction on for the 4.5 hr shot?

Wow, I'm sure you could make us all bark like chickens, now that we are hypnotized by this fabulous night shot Vincent!

*You don't need to do 4.5 hours to get trails nor do you need to do 5k exposures. Part of it really depends on the focal length, the wider the longer the exposure time and the more you are zoomed in the less exposure time you'll need. If you are zoomed it at 100mm you can acheive fantastic trails in only 15 minutes, not every shot needs to have the full circle in the image. Personally the more you do it the more it lessens the powerful effect of the image so I'd keep it down to a few or just one of your favorites in your portfolio and this is definitely worthy. The sidelighting on the tree counterbalanced tree stands out well enough. There are so many
OPTIONS with night photography it's best to keep an open mind with it and limit oneself.

Nice, what a stellar light show!

Thanks all for the comments. Marc your 100% crop indeed is remarkably clean. I must say that I have experienced very noisy images with single exposures, but that was before I had the 5D2 and 1D4, so maybe it is time I try again as it sure is a hell of a lot of work to blend 64 images!

Hi Vincent

I am not normally a fan of star trails. For my taste I have only seen maybe 3 images that worked for me. This is one! It is so dynamic, the scene looks absolutely magical. Those trees are incredible and work great with the star trails. Did you capture this comp with the stars as pin points as well? Just curious, I would imagine the trails to be more spectacular though.

Very cool image!

Shane

LSB is doing a great job doesn't it :) I had the same 'gaps' problem with lighten blending mode and the same article had resolved it perfectly. A bit time consuming for 64 frames but it is worth it! Great work Vincent.

This is a super star trail image Vincent, definately worth all the hard work. The side lighting gives the trees a bit more depth.

Gary.

Oh, man! How cool is this! The side light into the quiver trees, the amazing star trails… Just a gorgeous creation Vincent. Congrats.

Beautiful nightscape Vincent, I do agree that the trails seem a little bright as presented, but definitely not a dealbreaker. The sidelighting on those fascinating trees is really nice.

This is a magical impressionistic photo. Congrats!