Night Shots
Sep 2nd, 2010 by jeremy
This last weekend I had the opportunity to enjoy camping with some photographer friends with the idea of relaxing, socializing, sharing, and generally looking to improve ourselves. It was a great weekend for me and I was happy to get to know some friends better all while doing some introspection. I look forward to developing my skills further and following through on some personal goals made.
Both nights I stayed up with a few night owls and made some night images. I confess that most of what I made looked pretty good on camera, but I found some serious faults when I got back and looked at the large on the computer. Good learning experiences even though there wasn’t a lot I’ll be showing online. I did take a lot of detail photos throughout the day, but I’ll decide later if those will appear in another post.
Half of the fun was the making of the photos, and some of the craziness that surrounded it. That’s one of those placement things though; you had to be there. Here are a few images made pointing the camera up at the sky.
I loved how we could see some of the Milky Way in this setting. We had to make the photos during the window of time after dark but before the moon started to come out creating too much ambient light. The moon was awesome, it just got in the way of a pure night sky!
This next photo was made as I was toying with different settings trying to get more of the Milky Way to show up. It all backfired because the stars were moving too fast (yes, I know we were actually moving) so in a short 3 minutes the stars instead looked like a huge meteor shower!
Don’t you love those orange trees? That’s entirely lit by the firelight. Amazing what a 3 minute exposure will pick up!
This next shot shows what happened just a few minutes later when the moon came out over the mountains. This is only a 30 second exposure, but look at all that light on the trees.
Finally, turning the camera toward the rising moon, I positioned the tripod so the moon was hidden behind a tree because it was so, so bright. Hiding the moon allowed me to capture the glow along with some stars in a way I was pretty happy with the results.
The weekend was exactly what I needed on many levels. Thanks to Everyone involved in making it awesome, both in planning and simply being there.
Oh, and yes Suzanne, you are a superstar! My photos didn’t get a shooting star, her’s did. I’m a loser 
Jeremy, I LOVE these photos! I was too shy to ask to see them when you were making them. Silly, I know, but that’s me. Next time I will totally ask for help, since my night shots all look like blobs!
Great writeup, it was fun to hang out with old/new friends. Your project motivated me to look deeper into myself to find something that I’m passionate about. I’m still struggling to come up with something but know that it will come. Thanks for the great laughs, we need to do this more.
Elizabeth you are silly! You totally should have stepped in as we were all experimenting and trying to get something good. I got a lot of very bad shots too, but a few I was happy with. Next time for sure!
Scott – Glad it provided some motivation; I needed some good feedback and was happy everyone found my project worthwhile to pursue. Now I just need to not let the busy-ness of life keep me from moving the project forward.
I grew up in Central Utah (Fillmore) and the night skies are one of the things I miss the most. You captured the feeling of these skies incredibly, well congrats. My favorite image is the moonrise it makes me feel like I am there watching it.
Thanks Ryan! It was a lot of fun being out in the open air. I’m headed out again to Palisades and hope to create more open air photos.
It was great being out in the open air and look forward to seeing some of the ghost pictures… Our talks inspired me (especially your project). I want to dig deeper, just have to find that deeper that will resonate with who I am.
Hey Jeremy, nice night shots, mine turned out crappy, guess I need to spend more time figuring out how to do star shots. Thanks for the information on backing up photos and again nice shots!