Dave Morrow: Night Sky Photography On the Edge of Reality

"Sometimes Things Get Complicated" ~ a panorama composed of 11 images ~ Photo by Dave Morrow

 Night Photography is a completely new field to Dave Morrow. Looking at his portfolio, It's hard to believe that he took his first shots of the Milky Way only two months ago!

Editor's Note: This feature is an update on a post I did about Dave back in October 2012.

"I have always been a huge fan of the subject," says Dave. He looked at thousands of pictures of the night sky, which made him want to create something completely different from everyone else.

"Night Tremors" ~ Ruby Beach on the Olympic Peninsula ~ Photo by Dave Morrow

 Two months ago, Dave was headed to the North Cascades to shoot Picture Lake and overheard someone talking about the meteor showers that night. After shooting the sunset he laid out and waited for the stars. His first shot was a bit dark, and the ISO was to low, but after messing around for about 10 minutes he managed to get something he really liked.

"When I got home from my first shoot and upload the picture onto my computer, I had no clue how to process this beast of an image," reports Morrow.  He decided to experiment and see what happened. As he moved different sliders around in Lightroom, some great colors start to come out in the image, so he decide to run with it, and the rest is history.

"When Worlds Collide" ~ Photo by Dave Morrow

Free Tutorial: Dave's star photography has been so well received on the Internet, he has produced a free tutorial and a set of inexpensive Lightroom presets to help others interesting in this type of night photography:

• Free Star Photography Tutorial (includes a 70-page eBook download)
• Dave's Star Photography Lightroom Presets (48 Lightroom presets for $10.00)

Challenges: Dave's biggest challenge in this new style of star photography is trying to come up with some cool stuff in the foreground to keep his shots interesting. "Finding new compositions that keep people coming back for more is a huge challenge that will continue to grow as I take more shots," remarks Dave.

"Shoot Me to the Stars" ~ Mt. Rainier from Sunrise Point ~ Photo by Dave Morrow

Favorite Equipment and Tools: Morrow's favorite piece of photographic equipment is his Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G lens. "Shooting super wide angles at fast apertures is key to star photography, and this thing handles it like a beast," whips Dave.

Number two has got to be the Nikon D800 which he feels seems to have a star photography “sweet spot” of ISO 5000. "I have never seen a camera handle ISO 5000 like this one does," reports Dave.

Number three would be his Really Right Stuff Tripod. Extending to 72 inches tall is a huge advantage when shooting the night sky for hours, due to the fact that he can look up at his camera without slouching over. The rest of his gear can be found here on his website.

And because the moon is a Milky Way photographer's worst enemy, Dave uses The Photographer's Ephemeris to know when the moons rises and sets (and how bright/big it will be on any given night), as well as the times of the sunrise and sunsets. He also uses a free light pollution map (by Blue Marble). Other tools are mentioned in his online tutorial. (Editor's Note: If you live in the continental United States, another great light pollution map is the Dark Sky Finder mention in our 12 September 2012 blog post.)

On the Edge of Reality: "Escaping people, and at times reality has always been something I enjoy now and then. In order to get good dark skies for stars photography you must do both of these things," says Dave. Adding somewhat philosophically, "So it works out well!"

More of Dave Morrow's photography can be found at his website. Dave also has a Free Learn Photography eCourse.

 

Ocean Lightning by Andre Kleynhans

Lightning strike over the ocean near Key West, Florida ~ © Andre Kleynhans
Nikon D800 • Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens @ 24mm, f/3.2, 5 seconds, ISO 160

Andre Kleynhans of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, captured these two spectacular lightning images at night from the 12th deck of a cruise ship, sailing out of Key West, Florida.

Lightning strike over the ocean near Key West, Florida ~ © Andre Kleynhans (click to enlarge)
Nikon D800 • Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 lens @ 70mm, f/2.8, 5 seconds, ISO 200

Both images were cropped slightly to Andre's taste. In the top image, he was trying to get the reflection across the water; and in the bottom image his goal was to dramatically fill the frame as much as possible.

Technique: Andre used a five-second exposure time in order to capture as many single lightning strikes as possible. The camera was set to fire continuously, until he had obtained the captures he desired. By keeping the shutter speed to only 5-seconds, Andre hoped to eliminate second lightning strikes within the same frame.

"I am aiming to catch only one lighting strike per exposure. If you leave it open for longer and you do get another lightning strike in the same exposure your 2nd strike will throw off your image due to the fact that the ship is constantly moving, so it will look like you have two images on top of each other, but not aligned —and you could not fix that in post," cautions Andre.

During hurricane season, one can find a lot of thunderstorms in the Caribbean. "The strong winds are usually more prominent along the railing of ship, [but] if you just move a couple of feet back you can escape the most of it," advises Andre.

Challenges: Standing on the open deck of a cruise ship leaves one at the mercy of the elements.

"You have heavy winds, lots of movement and rain that can come out of no where, as it is very dark out in the middle of the ocean. As long as you have a sturdy tripod, and you are set up in such a way that if the rain catches you by surprise, you can pick up your gear and make a run for cover. Make sure you are focused to infinity and try to shoot a little wider than the active part of the cloud; this way you can catch all the action. You can always crop a little bit in post," says Andre.

Tools: A steady tripod was essential. "When I took this image I was standing on deck 12 of the ship (in the front). It is entirely exposed to the wind, so I had to make sure I place my tripod in [a way] to try to avoid as much of the wind as possible. Taking these types of shots at 5 seconds does give you a bit of room to play. A soon as the lightning hits, your image is exposed and you just pretty much wait for the shutter to close again. Its so dark out there in the ocean it actually makes it an easy environment to shoot lightning," says Andre.

Andre used Adobe Lightroom to do the minimal adjustments that he did to the images.

Satisfaction: This was the first lighting storm Andre was able to shoot since upgrading to the Nikon D800, and his expectations were very high. "When I saw that first exposure on the LCD I did a little dance, because I knew that I captured a winner. The satisfaction came when I zoomed in and checked that it was tack sharp. This made standing out there in the 85-degree heat of the Caribbean worth the effort."

Andre Kleynhans was born in Pretoria, South Africa. Andre lived in South Africa until he was 25. After that, he started working on cruise ships, and has been on them now for over six years (he is currently a PADI Instructor). Having the opportunity to see the world ignited his interest in photography.

Andre had always loved taking his dad’s camera from him and being the one taking the family pictures. His career on cruise ships gave him the opportunity to invest in his first camera. Andre learn pretty much everything he knows about photography through self-studying, and is a big supporter of a website called CreativeLive.

Today, Andre shoots with a Nikon D800. He loves landscape photography —anything from sunsets/sunrises, seascapes, the moon or stars —if he has a nice dark evening. He also enjoys doing panoramas, and finds it very interesting to cut up a scene with the camera and recreate it in post production. More of Andre's photography can be found on his website.

'The Mask' at Bryce Canyon by Steve Waterman

Milky Way stars over "The Mask" at Bryce Canyon National Park ~ © Steve Waterman

Steve Waterman took our Photo of the Day with a Nikon D800, using a Nikkor 14-24mm  f/2.8 lens (at 20mm) • f/2.8 • 30 sec • ISO 6400. "The Mask" is a sandstone formation on the Navajo Trail, in Bryce Canyon National Park. Steve was facing the northern end of the Milky Way in this picture (you can clearly see the Andromeda Galaxy in the middle-right of the sky).

This formation was light painted by your editor (using a diffused quartz halogen spotlight), during one of our August workshops, last year. "The Mask" is an unofficial name I gave this feature, after finding out the park service had no name for it. (Here's a sunrise version of this formation.)

Steve Waterman shares photography for fun and relaxation with his wife, Denise.  To support the photography hobby, he practices law, doing commercial litigation and reorganization with an international law firm.

"Play Misty For Me" by Steve Rengers

"Play Misty For Me" - Moonstone Beach - Cambria California ~ © Steve Rengers (click to enlarge)

Steve Rengers took our Photo of the Day at about 90 minutes before sunrise with his Nikon D800, using a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 prime lens. His exposure was for 10 seconds at f/3.2, ISO 1600, in full manual mode. He also added foreground lighting with an off-camera Nikon SB600 speed light, fired by hand from approximately six feet away from the camera position, with the strobe on the lowest power setting.

Challenges: Steve often asks himself, "Why is it that the best composition always dictates that your tripod will be placed in the most precarious spot possible?" Despite having the waves splashing up over the rocks, and creating a salt mist that required a lens cleaning every 30 seconds, this is the type of challenge Steve loves! He often finds he needs to reorder his priorities so as to not let complicated situations get the best of him.

"It helps to know what you want to achieve from an image and use that as a starting point," says Steve. Getting the desired water movement became the biggest challenge, and a 10-second exposure turned out to be the ticket. From there he went down a stop to improve the sharpness. Then it was just a matter of ratcheting down the ISO until the histogram was in the sweet spot.

Adding the light painting presented the next challenge. Once the shutter was activated (using a shutter delay), Steve would raced off to get a position for his speed light. He had ten seconds to jump a dozen or so slippery rocks in hopes of landing in a suitable spot to fire his speed light manually. "This process went on a while and after 20 or so attempts I finally got the correct lighting in conjunction with the correct water motion."

Equipment and Priorities: Steve went through the lens buying and hardware acquisition phase, blaming that for his shortcomings. After a few years, it started to become apparent to him that composition and understanding light was most important. He sold a dozen lenses and settled on three that he uses for all his landscape work. Those are the Nikkor AF 17-35mm f/2.8, a 14mm f/2.8 manual prime (Rokinon) and a Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.4. A headlamp to keep his hands free at night, and a sturdy tripod that spiders out close to the ground, with nice rubber feet to keep it firmly planted, rounds out his collection.

Steve currently lives in Bakersfield, California. He started his photographic ventures long ago, during the age of film. "I firmly and happily embraced the digital era, with its instant satisfaction advantages, coupled with the ability to see what you are doing wrong on the fly and make the needed corrections before you leave the field."

Passion for the night: One successful night shoot at the Trona Pinnacles, in the Mojave desert, on a perfect night, was all it took for Steve to become hooked on night photography; and that is what drives his passion today. He often finds himself alone in the dark. His friends call him "weird" because of his passion for night photography, and more so for staying up all night waiting for these precious moments to materialize. "I get a huge amount of self-satisfaction from shooting at night, because whenever I find myself alone at 2:00 am, staring up a blanket of stars, I know I am capturing something uncommon; and to me, everything looks so much better at night."

"Pinnacle Party" - Trona Pinnacles, Mojave Desert ~ © Steve Rengers (click to enlarge)

More of Steve Rengers' images can be seen on his website.

Royce's 2014 Workshop, Lecture & Video Conference Schedule: NightScapeEvents.com
   -  25% OFF savings on select "IMAGE10" workshops booked before April 1, 2014  -

POTW: 'Nighttime Rainbow Over The Rockies' by Mike Berenson

"Nighttime Rainbow Over The Rockies" © Mike Berenson (click on image for a larger view)

This panoramic Photo of the Week was taken by Mike Berenson from a small pond near Loveland Pass, west of Denver, Colorado. It shows the summer Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon across the mountains of the Continental Divide, with Denver light pollution glowing just above the mountains. The amber color is partially due to smoke from recent wildfires. Mike captured this panorama this past June with his new Nikon D800, using a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens.

Technique: This panorama is made up of 16 vertical images, each exposed at f/1.8 for 20 seconds, ISO 6400. The images were stitched together with a software called PTGui.

Challenges: One of Mike's biggest challenges was getting just enough detail on the mountains and foreground. He had tried to shoot the same location under darker skies (without a moon), but found that to get it just right, he really needed moonlight —but not too bright. He choose a day in late June, with a quarter moon, that worked perfectly.

Berenson also feels the shadow detail was improved by the low-light capabilities of his new D800, but the larger files of the D800 also created a computer challenge when having to process and combine 16 images! "This may not have been the best time to test the new beast, but I didn't mind," laughs Mike.

Mike had shot at this location before, only to be disappointed. In order to make this image work, a lot of conditions he had little control over had to all come together: Clear skies, the right amount of moonlight, and calm winds so he could get good reflections on the pond. "I [also] needed the pond to be thawed (sounds obvious, huh), but that seemed to take forever —with a few wasted trips that I just chalked up to scouting," whips Mike.

Satisfaction: One of the goals Mike had was capturing the reflected stars on the pond from a little bit of distance. He had been taking plenty of up-close reflections; but for this location, he really wanted to show the pond as a smaller component of the foreground. "...almost like it's at the foot of Grizzly Peak, even though it's really across the valley," explains Berenson.

"When I first saw the results in a stitched panorama, I had a huge smile," says Mike. "It's difficult to appreciate the grand view of the sky and the curving milky way with each individual image in a panoramic sequence. But when you put it all together, it becomes so much more than the sum of the parts."

More of Mike Berenson's photography can be seen at his Colorado Captures website and his Flickr photostream.