Big Bend Night Photography Events in April 2019

I have planned a dual event for April 2019 based in the Big Bend of Texas. There will be a photography workshop followed by a guided shoot. You can take one or the other or both! Click here for the details.

EVENT 1: Workshop: April 5 - 9, 2019
Tuition: $650

EVENT 2: Guided Shoot: April 9 - 13, 2019
Tuition: $350

Note that you can take both events for a combined price of $900.

Group photo from October 2017 workshop.

Please contact me if you're interested.

Night/Star + Landscape Article

For quite a while now, I've been working on a detailed article on my night photography. I've finished the first draft, and you can download it here: http://www.texbrick.com/photo/notes/starshots.pdf.

The article is based on my experiences and covers shooting conditions, locations, gear, and post processing. I hope to update this as time goes on and I gain more experience with this type of photography.

click to read article

Dark Skies Over Pine Springs

During our recent trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, I had an opportunity to photograph dark and clear skies. It is not very often that I get to visit a location that is mostly free of light pollution and have dark, clear skies at the same time.

click for larger image

The moon was new during our visit to the park, and I was fortunate that on both nights during our trip, the skies cleared from evening thunderstorms after sunset.

click for larger image

Both shots were taken at 24mm, 30 seconds, f/2.2, and ISO 3200.

Dark Skies

Self portrait with the summer Milky Way (near the Sabinal River in Utopia, TX, July 2009).

click for larger image

Canon 5DII with Canon 24mm f/1.4 II
25 sec.
f/2.5
ISO 3200

The Night Sky - Test Shots

I love night photography, especially astrophotography. A goal I've had for a long while is to get a nice, clean shot of a dark sky (i.e. no moon) that shows off the Milky Way and also has a bit of landscape in the scene to give a visual sea level.

Two weekends ago, I was hunting in the Texas Hill Country in a location that has little light pollution. I took several shots one evening about 2 hours after sunset and about 30 minutes before moonrise (the moon was waning and about 90% full, so if I tried shooting after moonrise, the sky would have been too light).

click to see larger pic

Canon 5D + 24-70mm f/2.8L
30 sec., 24mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600 (and then pushed +1 stop in RAW processing)

And here are two more shots taken at about the same settings as stated above:

click to see larger pics

The greenish light on the trees is from a sodium vapor light on a nearby cabin. The light streak in the photo just above (left) is from a couple of guys on 4-wheelers passing by.

Getting a shot like this is difficult given the limitations of the equipment. Exposure times are limited to 15 to 30 seconds because the goal is to NOT have star trails. With a reasonably wide focal length (24mm in this case), star trails will just start to become noticeable around 25 - 30 seconds exposure time (actually, it depends on the final output of the photo; for web-sized images you could probably go 60 seconds, but my ultimate goal is a nice, largish print: 8x10 or even 11x17).

I shot wide open (f/2.8) at ISO 1600. I found that the resulting exposure is still a little too dark. I pushed the exposure +1 stop during RAW processing, but that increased the digital noise in the file to a point where it greatly degraded image quality. ISO 1600 looked pretty good, but ISO 3200 (effectively) did not. Post-processing noise reduction works well, but it also kills the fine detail (there's an amazing amount of tiny stars visible in the sky, and that's the fine detail I want to see in the final print).

The exposure that worked out best (providing the best-looking sky) from my series of test shots was this: 30 sec., ISO 3200, f/2.8. However, ISO 3200 is not really usable and 30 seconds is just a little too long (star trails).

So, I'm going to have to get a faster lens or a camera that is better at very high ISO :-)