View to the north between roughly 1am and 3:30am on Thanksgiving Night as viewed from our tent....

View to the north between roughly 1am and 3:30am on Thanksgiving Night as viewed from our tent. The North Star is the one in the middle :)

Location
Joshua Tree NP
Photographer
John Hovell
Date taken

Comments

  • Wow that is neat

    — Jay Fletcher

  • OMG .... how did you do that? How does the camera record a 2.5 hour exposure? Makes you wonder why we don't get dizzy. Just loved it!

    — Margaret Hovell

  • Again, very neat. I am also curious to know how you did this.

    — Catherine Hovell

  • Thanks everyone! It's actually a composite photo, made by stacking about 300 images of 30 second exposure each, shot continuously using a tripod and a remote that allows the shutter button to be held down continuously (Mom & Dad, you gave that to Monica a few years ago at Christmas). I combined the photos using a program called StarTrails (www.startrails.de) which is really just a shortcut for doing this manually in Photoshop. I learned this technique from http://www.digital-photography-school.com/an-introduction-to-shooting-stars-trails. Shooting separate shots gives better noise immunity and also allows you to remove a frame if a plane or shooting star messes up the effect you were going for.

    — John Hovell