Schwabacher Starry Night

Title

Schwabacher Starry Night

Artist

Mike Berenson

Medium

Photograph

Description

In one of my favorite locations in Grand Teton National Park, I was able to not just scout the area for workshops, I was able to get a decent shot of the area at night. And with my timing right where I wanted it, I got to shoot the scene with the Milky Way directly over the Grand Teton!

I was a little surprised that my shorter exposure images that showed off the Milky Way weren't my favorites. They're good but this single long exposure frame captured over 4 minutes really did it for me. And with a cute, fun wildlife encounter that night, I was pretty excited.

With a little off-camera light painting, Schwabachers Landing sure seemed to come to life below the Grand Teton. This image was captured in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

Wildlife
This one took some nerve - especially the part where I went out under moonless dark skies… alone. I've learned that the risk of aggressive animal encounters is much lower with groups of people of at least 4. So while I felt comfortable when I was near my vehicle where I could as they say keep something big between me and the animal, when I left, I knew I had to make some good decisions.

What did I do? Well, I scouted first in the daylight with plenty of other people around. Not much risk there. Then, I use lots of light and I try to sound like a group of 4 or more. It's not a proven approach or anything and it could be embarrassing someday, but it seems to work to some degree. With this approach, I can see animals on the horizon that see my light and then disappear - although I didn't see any at this location.

Beyond that, I find that at night, I use my hearing a lot to detect what animals are around. With that, I could hear (and see) some Beavers nearby. I could also hear some Moose that were making noise a little ways further up the river and then a few more back toward the parking area. I continued listening for them to try to get some warning if they decided to come my way. They did not.

As I was finishing up, I was amazed to see a whole bunch of Beavers that were out and about patrolling their ponds. It was fun to watch them and I even stayed a little while watching them on my way out. At one point, one of the little Beavers made eye contact with me and decided to come over for a closer look. He got within about 10 feet or so and just hung out with me for a little while. It was a great wildlife encounter that I was happy to see. I was much happier seeing a cute little Beaver than a mean old Moose!

How I Got The Shot
Before we even talk about the shooting, I want to point out that this was a great example of a place where scouting the location in the daylight was key. If I didn't know just where to go to see the mountain reflections in the water during the daytime, I really don't think I could have found them too well in the dark. Remember… there was no moonlight to guide my way. And while I could light up much of the area near me, the trees on the other side and certainly the peaks were difficult to see without having shoot a picture and effectively let the camera be my eyes.

As I'd been looking forward to this adventure for some time, I had a whole bunch of different approaches in-mind to try. This was especially tempting as I'd timed my visit when the Milky Way was directly over the Grand Teton.

In the end though, I decided that I really liked the look of this single long-exposure the best. At 4 minutes in exposure, it was long enough to get the star trails and good quality without being too low in ISO to pick up any of my light painting. And since I had no moonlight to work with, I felt that I needed to do some light painting to provide some context for the background.

My light painting by the way was added from a position off-camera way off to the left side. I used a Light Paint Stroke with more light on the distant trees than on the nearby bushes to keep the light balanced overall.

So without any complexity of blending, I had it pretty easy in post-processing. I used Nik's Color Efex Pro with filters including Tonal Contrast and Darken/Lighten Center. I then added a couple of curves adjustments layers in Photoshop - mostly to darken the image and bring out some of the color.

Photo Gear
• Camera Body - Nikon D800 Digital SLR Camera
• Camera Lens - Bower 35mm f/1.4 Lens for Nikon
• Tripod Head - Acratech GV2 Ball Head / Gimbal Head with Lever Clamp & Acratech Large Leveling Base
• Tripod Legs - FEISOL Elite CT-3472 Rapid Tripod Legs
• Remote Trigger - Vello Shutterboss Version II Timer Remote Switch for Nikon with 10-Pin Connection

Exposure Settings - Single Exposure
• ISO: 800
• Aperture: f/2.8
• Shutter Speed: 4 minutes

Uploaded

October 7th, 2014

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