Behind the Scenes - “The Border”
Hey Folks,
Welcome to my very first blog from ‘Behind the Scenes’ series. I though its good to start with a Star Trail Image I captured few years back.
Winter is the star trail season for me; cold, crisp and long nights are the ones I’m after. Inching towards winter, this image was from October, 2018 from Wales, UK.
I love Wales due to pristine dark skys. Depending on the location its between 3.5 to 4.5 hour drive for me. A drive I’m very happy to do for the quality of the skys :) Day was mostly rainy. I arrived on location about an hour before sunset. Although I was clear about the star trails that I was going to photograph, I was still unsure about the foreground subject to complement the sky. Night was forecasted to be clear throughout so I had my camping gear with me. After about a 45 minute ascend, I started looking for a suitable location for the photograph. Rain has made the area all muddy which limited my options. Not ideal, but I had to settle for a simple foreground, which simply is the grass land with my tent as the foreground subject.
The image contains 1000 individual photo for the sky shot over 8 and half hours. I captured the foreground first ( 3 photos, 1EV apart) and went to sleep hoping the weather stays as forecasted and it did. I loved the ‘tree line horizon’ acting as a border hence named the photo after it.
GEAR:
Camera : Sony A7S
Lens : Nikon 14-24mm 2.8 G (metabone adaptor)
EXIF data.
SKY : ISO 800, 30 sec, F 4.0, @ 14mm; FG : ISO 500, multiple exposures , F 4.0 @ 14 mm
Sometimes in Photography unexpected turns out better than expected, you just got to be patient, execute the plan and hope for the best. This is a good example. I was worried about having nothing in my foreground connecting to the sky but in the end simple composition made up for it driving the focus towards the star trails.
Rgds
Deepal