Night Photography

September 12, 2012

I have been expermenting with night photography, this picture below was taken with a Nikon 5100, exposure time was 60 minutes (8:55-9:55) with an F11 aperture, ISO 100 film speed VR on, focal length 18mm and manual focus. 

Ironically I believe I have the north star in the picture by accident but an added plus. A plus from ambient lighting is illuminating the leaves on the trees. 

So the next night I tried doing a one hour exposure at F22 and the results weren't as anticipated. Was hoping for a darker background ..Photo was darker from smaller aperture but the star trails were dimmer.

Apparently I need a darker area with less ambient light to create a darker background and be able to use a larger aperture like F8 or F5.6 to highlight the star trails. 

The moon shoot was August 30,2012. It was in reality a blue moon or second full moon of the month, anytime there is a full moon in 29 days it is considered a blue moon which apparently only happens every few years. This happened to be the  night before the full moon but I couldn't  tell the difference. The above picture is after I processed the pic on software to highlite being a blue moon, the unedited picture is below. 

The picture below was taken at about 6 am and exposed for about 30 minutes. The sun was coming up so the sky colored blue but still showed the star trails looking east.