Bulldog Mtn. Star Trails

I like the idea of this shot. It's something I would attempt, but I would suggest a few things. The first thing is maybe wait until a new moon or crescent moon so the sky is not so bright. I know this area is quite close to the city but I know how much difference it would make in the brightness of the sky without the illumination of the moon. As for the foreground, for me it feels like too much. Perhaps maybe darkening the bottom portion a bit so the cliffs stand out more. I don't know if you were trying to get some reflection of the river or not, but if so I would suggest trying to get to the edge of the river and get all or most of it reflected or at least a higher vantage point to see more of the river. A lot of it is personal preference on my part but this type of shot has a ton of potential. I'd like to see more stars preferably visible on that bright right side of the sky.

Tonia, It's a nice shot that would be much improved if you could get stars throughout the entire sky. If you lost the RHS to the lights of Phoenix, the only way to record stars there is a shorter exposure. Looking at the star trails, I would expect that your exposure was much more than 30s...probably many minutes. I've shot 30s night sky exposures and only see slight lengthening of the stars (there are a couple of recent night sky posts in my gallery). If your exposure here was many minutes, then a <30s shot might show some star on the right.

Oops, this was more like a 30 min. exposure! Sorry about that! First I would like to say thank you for your critiques. I agree that it would probably be better to try this again maybe under a different moon to try to hold some of the detail in the sky. I did a few different comps w/ less foreground but if I remember correctly the sky looked even worse. Anyway it is not twisting my arm to go back to this location & try it again!

Tonia, Looks like a great place to go back to! I think you can avoid some of the city light by moving to the right, still shooting the same rocks, but aiming more to the left. The right is the weak side of this comp, anyway. The first thing that caught my attention was the title on the thumbnail -- How can you see star trails in the daytime? That's because all of the sky looks as bright as the day, and seeing stars against a bright blue sky is just not natural. To get the dark sky, you need to stop down and/or used a ND filter, and either a split ND grad or a two-exposure blend it you want to retain some detail in the background. But a nigth shot should have both a dark sky and a fairly dark Earth. That should look great with such a killer comp. Have a wonderful return trip!