More Parks in the Dark: Rounding Out Our 2017 Workshop Schedule

Back in September we announced the first part of our 2017 workshop calendar. We also promised that before long we'd be ready to announce even more opportunities to learn about night photography while enjoying the camaraderie of like-minded photographers under the beautiful skies of our national lands.

Well, now we're here, getting the new year started by following through on that promise. Today we're publicly releasing the details of six new 2017 night photography adventure workshops.

For our Passport Series, one is a brand new workshop in a remote and unique national park, while two are second offerings of our two most popular '17 locations. And for our Adventure Series, one new workshop is on the beautiful New England coast, one is in the mountains of California, and one represents our first international event, a night photography tour of Westfjords, Iceland.

Passport Series

Our new Passport Series workshops include a deep dive into the night skies of a national park, plus location scouting tutorials, lectures and image reviews. Plus a whole lot of camaraderie.

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Dry Tortugas National Park

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Joshua Tree National Park

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Olympic National Park

Joshua Tree National Park, California (2nd Week)

April 21-26, 2017 — Joshua Tree National Park encompasses sections of two different deserts—the Mojave and the Colorado—both full of opportunities for remarkable images. We had a high demand for the first week of this workshop, so we added this second week to provide more people the opportunity to attend!

More info & registration: Joshua Tree II

Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida

July 27-30, 2017 — Live life on a boat as we explore one of the most remote national parks in the NPS. The sights on Fort Jefferson—the most ambitious and extensive coastal fortification in the United States, located in Dry Tortugas National Park—are absolute wonders to photograph. And all this in the darkest skies on the east coast, 70 miles from Key West into the Gulf of Mexico.

More info & registration: Dry Tortugas

Olympic National Park, Washington (2nd Week)

September 24-29, 2017 — Photograph on the rugged mountains, in the vibrant rainforests and along the pristine coastline of Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula, in one of the most beautiful and diverse national parks in the U.S. Our first week of Olympic sold out in just two days, so we're offering this second workshop here in this park's best season.

More info & registration: Olympic II

Adventure Series

Adventure Series workshops are forays into national monuments, private lands near national parks, and more. These workshops will generally be shorter in duration than our Passport Series, and depending on the event, may involve less time in the classroom and more time in the field having adventures.

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Cape Cod National Seashore

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Eastern Sierra

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Westfjords, Iceland

Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts (3 Spots Left!)

May 21-24, 2017 — Photograph the open sand dunes, regal lighthouses, quaint cottages and quiet seaside villages of Cape Cod National Seashore, one of the natural gems of the New England coast.

Please note that as of the morning of this blog post, only three spots remain for the Cape Cod National Seashore workshop, so if you want to go, register now!

More info & registration: Cape Cod

Westfjords of Iceland (sold out)

August 27-September 5, 2017 — This photo tour will be special in that it occurs at the end of the brief Icelandic summer. We will visit the Westfjords before the area becomes inaccessible for the winter, but late enough in the year that we might see the Aurora Borealis.

Please note that this event sold out when pre-announced to our alumni and our workshop-announcement email list. To receive early notifications of new workshops (including, hint hint, to this same country in 2018), sign up for our workshop announcements today! Alternatively, to be added to the waitlist for this photo tour in 2017, please visit the following link: Westfjords

Eastern Sierra, California

October 30-November 4, 2017 — This workshop occurs just before the full moon, and is intended primarily for photographers who are interested in light painting by moonlight. The workshop will feature three nights at the Alabama Hills in California’s Eastern Sierra, one night at the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains, and one night photographing a mystery location.

More info & registration: Eastern Sierra

And don't miss out on ...

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Cuyahoga Valley National Park

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We have only three places remaining for our light-painting-intensive Passport Series workshop at Cuyahoga Valley National Park this coming May. Be sure to register today!

May 7-12, 2017: Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Cuyahoga Valley is one of the most visited national parks in the country, and also one of the most unique. It combines stunning natural scenes with rural features, such as railroad depots, farms, historic structures, covered bridges and old cemeteries, granting the photographer a nearly endless buffet of subjects to photograph at night. This will be a light-painting-intensive workshop, so ready your flashlights!

More info & registration: Cuyahoga Valley

Seize the Night

Never miss out on one of our adventures. Be one of the first to learn about our new workshops by signing up for our mailing list/workshop announcements. Plus you'll get our free ebook, Seize the Night: 20 Tips for Photographing in the Dark.

We're eager to see you out in the parks with us this year, photographing the night!

(Click here to see our entire 2017 Workshops Calendar.)

Chris Nicholson is the author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

What's the Longest Usable Shutter Speed for Astro-Landscape? (Part I)

One of the things that makes night photography rewarding and fun is that there are really no absolutes of right or wrong when it comes to exposure.

Under “normal” lighting conditions, a well-exposed image is pretty easily defined. Clean highlights, no clipped shadows, a good histogram—there are plenty of ways to evaluate exposure, and it’s usually obvious when an exposure is “correct” or “incorrect.”

But at night, exposure is much more open to interpretation. Rather than a right or wrong exposure, the photographer has more leeway to interpret the scene to their own tastes or liking. Additionally, with regard to astro-landscape photography, exposure relates to more than simply an appropriate amount of light reaching the sensor. In particular, exposure length has a profound impact on the appearance of stars in the sky.

The solution is relatively straight-forward, though the reasons and the factors that play into it are many and intertwined. But let's explore! This is the first of a two-part blog post about all the decisions and considerations that go into determining the optimal exposure for creating astro-landscape images with star points.

Workshop students in Zion National Park. This view of Checkerboard Mesa faces southeast, and shows movement in the stars that would be visible only in a very large print, or when pixel-peeping at 100 percent magnification. Nikon D750, Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 lens. 15 seconds, f/f2.8, ISO 12800.

Finding the (In)Correct Exposure

One of the most frustrating aspects of night photography is that it can be difficult to establish the “correct” exposure. Yes, I just contradicted myself, and there lies the rub. Night photography is not an exact science, and trying to make it so is an exercise in futility of the highest order. There are so many variables, some of which are beyond the photographer’s control.

Attempting to “get it right” is more than science, more than art, and more than an ambiguous combination of the two. Some nocturnal imagery is more about a feeling, an atmosphere or a mood, but other images are more grounded in technical considerations. Good night photography exposures can be like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s view on pornography—you know it when you see it!

“For every image, there is a set of variables that affect how long an image may be exposed before the stars appear as trails, and managing those variables is key to a successful image.”

Astro-landscape imagery is a type of night photography that requires a good deal of thought and many considerations about what might be the best exposure for any given situation. Usually, determination of a photographic exposure is led by one of the exposure variables—aperture, ISO or shutter speed. One would choose a small aperture to have large depth of field. For example, you might have a subject in the foreground and stars in the background that both need to be tack sharp. Alternatively, in the case of a portrait, a large aperture that yields a shallow depth of field would usually be the better choice. In the case of an image where you know in advance that you want to make a large print, a low ISO would take priority.

In the case of astro-landscape photography, finding a shutter speed that is fast enough to record the stars as points of light rather than showing them as trails is usually the critically important variable. (Unless, of course, you want to produce star trails, but that’s a whole other issue and technique. Here we’re just talking about reproducing the look of actually being under a starry sky.)

Additionally, the combination of extremely low light levels, short shutter speeds and the need for depth of field necessitate compromise. We need to consider all three exposure variables, and the challenge is to combine them in such a way that addresses both the technical limitations and the constraints of the image.

Unhappy Trails

The stars are moving in space, but their distance from Earth makes that movement negligible in our photographs. Instead, it is the Earth’s rotation that causes long-exposure photographs of the night sky to show star “trails,” or lines of light in the sky that create a circular pattern centered over the polar axis.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, stars appear to revolve around Polaris, or the North Star, which is centered approximately over the north polar axis. Stars in the northern sky form relatively small circles around the North Star, and stars in the eastern, western or southern skies form larger, longer star circles around Polaris.

Mesquite Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park. This image shows the stars rotating around the North Star, and faces north-northwest. Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm f/1.8 lens. Stacked exposures totaling 2 hours, f/3.3, ISO 400.

For every image, there is a set of variables that affect how long an image may be exposed before the stars appear as trails, and managing those variables is key to a successful image. Accounting for those variables and weighing the pros and cons of compromising exposure, noise, depth of field and stellar movement can be a daunting task.

Many photographers attempt to scientifically calculate values for each of these variables and in turn come up with an exposure that is optimized for the conditions at hand—but this is tedious and, honestly, unnecessary. Having an understanding of the various factors that affect the appearance of stars in astro-landscape images is helpful, so let’s review them before coming up with a strategy to maintain sharp stars in your nocturnal landscape photographs.

Five Factors

Focal length

More than anything else, the focal length of your lens determines the longest usable shutter speed. In general, the wider your lens, the longer you can expose without showing stellar movement. Some people use a formula such as the 400 Rule or 500 Rule to calculate shutter speed. These formulas can be helpful, but do not take variables other than focal length into account.

Orientation

Camera orientation relative to the North Star is the next variable that needs to be factored into an exposure. Since it takes Earth 24 hours to make one complete rotation, a hypothetical 24-hour exposure with the camera oriented toward the north or south (depending on which hemisphere the photographer is shooting in) will record star trails that form a complete circle. Stars near the pole star will create small circles, while stars in the opposite part of the sky will create much larger circles in the same exposure.

Therefore, if a camera is directed due-north in the Northern Hemisphere, or due-south in the Southern Hemisphere, the resulting star trails created during a long exposure will be noticeably shorter than star trails in photographs where the camera is pointed away from the pole. This means that the longest usable shutter speed for “freezing” stars increases substantially as the camera’s orientation approaches north or south.

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, Maine. This wide-angle view of the oft-photographed lighthouse shows relatively little stellar movement in the northern part of the sky on the left side of the frame, and much more to the east on the right side of the frame (see detail photos, below). Nikon D750, Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 lens. 30 seconds, f/4, ISO 6400.

Pemaquid detail north

Pemaquid detail east

Sensor

Sensor size, or camera format, also make a difference. Movements during an exposure cover a larger percentage of a small sensor relative to a larger one. This is similar in principal to a telephoto lens giving the impression of longer star trails due to a narrower angle of view than a wide angle lens. It takes less time for a star to transverse a smaller sensor than a larger one, or to cross the image plane of a telephoto image than a wide-angle one. The star trails are actually the same size in each photograph, but appear larger due to their size relative to the frame. Therefore, the smaller the sensor, the shorter the longest usable shutter speed.

Resolution

Camera resolution also impacts apparent movement of stars, or anything else in an image. Higher-resolution sensors show more detail, and therefore amplify any flaws in an image as well as the image itself.

Final view

However, increased resolution’s impact on an image is tied to the last considerations in determining longest usable shutter speed: final image size, viewing medium and viewing distance.

If a photograph will be viewed as a small print, there is more tolerance for movement, because it won’t be noticeable to the viewer—and thus you can get away with a longer shutter speed than you could for a more highly magnified, larger print. The same is true if the image will be viewed only on a screen, as opposed to as a print.

Lastly, the more distant the image from the viewer, the less apparent any movement or other “flaws” will be. An extreme example of this is demonstrated by Apple’s use of iPhone photographs on giant billboards! A 12 megapixel file from an iPhone 7 must be magnified tremendously to achieve billboard scale, resulting a very low resolution image. But because billboards are viewed from a substantial distance, the images used can be extremely low resolution and still appear to be good quality. Typically, billboard images are printed at 40 to 50 dpi, as opposed to 300 dpi and higher for photographic prints.

This means that a low resolution image viewed from a great distance is very forgiving of subject, or for that matter, of camera movement. Conversely, a high resolution print that is meant to be viewed at close distance will reveal every possible detail (and flaw) contained in the photograph.

Putting It All Together

Despite the apparent complexity of this multitude of variables, a little experience is all that it takes to effectively determine the longest usable shutter speed for astro-landscape photographs. By keeping these variables in mind while photographing, making critical observations and appropriate adjustments, sharp star images are well within reach.

The Milky Way over Mono Lake. The moon is just about to rise under the arch of the Milky Way in the eastern sky. Some movement is visible at full magnification, but the best combination of exposure variables was used to achieve a balance between image noise, depth of field and star points. Compromise is almost always necessary to get the shot. Figuring out how to make those compromises is what makes for successful astro-landscape photographs. Canon 6D and Sigma 24mm f/1.4 lens. Panorama consisting of five vertical images, each 20 seconds, f/4, ISO 6400.

In the second part of this article, I’ll compare the use of the 400 and 500 Rules with different focal length lenses to help you further refine your technique.

Click here to read Part II of this article.

Lance Keimig has been photographing at night for 30 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images and workshops at www.thenightskye.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Remote Question: Wireless or Wired Intervalometers for Camera Triggering?

One of night photography's essential tools—the intervalometer—has two main variants: wired and wireless. Which is better? When? Let's explore that.

In this post, I will refer to "classic" intervalometers. We'll cover the Bluetooth and WiFi ones in a future post. Let's quickly establish the tools covered in this post:

Wired Intervalometer

An external camera shutter control device that is hard-wired and plugs into your camera.

Vello Wired Shuterboss II

Wireless Intervalometer

An external camera shutter device that has a transmitter (the intervalometer) as wells as a receiver that plugs into your camera.

Vello Wireless Shutterboss II

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Now let's get down to the nitty-gritty and understand where they shine ... and where they do not.

Wired Pros

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Two AAA batteries last a long time!

• One set of batteries generally lasts a long time (over a year for me).
• Only one piece means fewer failure points.
• About half the price.
• Sometimes simpler software—fewer options means fewer variables to set and navigate.
• If the batteries run out, you can always use the sliding and locking Bulb button to manually open and close your shutter.

Wired Cons

• If you don't strap it down to your tripod leg or use a caddy, the weight of the intervalometer may damage the connection to your camera body.
• To get in front of the camera to light-write or light-paint, you have to set a delay and listen for the camera shutter, or if the subject is too far away, count in your head or use another timer (such as a watch or smartphone).
• Same scenario above—no feedback about the exposure ending except for listening for the shutter (if you're close enough) or running another timer.
• If you upgrade your camera body and the connection is different, you have to get another intervalometer—the cables are hard-wired and not interchangeable.

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Note the wired has only the top row of functions, while wireless has both top and bottom rows of functions. (click/tap for larger view)

Wireless Pros

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No stress on top of the camera!

• Having the intervalometer with you at all times allows you freedom to trigger and walk away while still seeing the total exposure time/total exposure count.
• You can trigger from the safety (and warmth or coolness) or your car or tent.
• The receiver traditionally sits atop your hot shoe, which means no stress on the connection to your camera body; even if not on your shoe, it's usually very lightweight.
• You can trigger with great precision when doing light writing, light painting or getting crazy with a Pixelstick, catapulting glow sticks or whatever your genius brain devises.
• The wireless version usually can be plugged directly into a camera without using a receiver—a nice option to have when you just want to stand by your camera.
• Because of the wireless design, you can get one intervalometer and many different cables—this can be useful if you upgrade your camera body, or want to loan it to a fellow night photographer.
• If the batteries run out, you can always use the sliding and locking Bulb button to manually open and close your shutter.

Wireless cons

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Switch-hitter: Swap cables when changing cameras!

• If you happen to walk too far away from your camera, the exposure program stops—OOPS! Why? Because the transmitter is constantly broadcasting shutter control information to the receiver.
• Two sets of batteries to maintain, which also may drain at different speeds, and may even be different types (e.g., alkaline, NiMh, etc.).
• Since the transmitter broadcasts information all the time, plus has to operate a radio, the batteries don't last as long as with a wired intervalometer.
• Some wireless intervalometers have two sets of menus, and the default is what I call "daytime mode"—when you want to get to the part of the menu for long and interval exposures, you have to remember (every time) to use the cross pad to get to it.

Wrapup

There are many tools to fit many situations—never one perfect tool. So choose wisely when gearing up for your night photography, including which intervalometer to purchase or to bring along.

On that note, I use only wired intervalometers. I prefer them for many of the pros listed above. And at half the price, a backup isn't a painful investment.

Want to learn more about intervalometers? Check out our blog post/screencast about mastering them.

See more about Matt's photography, art, workshops and writing at MattHillArt.com. Follow Matt on Twitter Instagram Facebook.

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Upcoming workshops from National Parks at Night

Level Up With Light Painting: Correcting the Color of Your Flashlight (Part I)

For the photographer who enjoys light painting, the flashlight (or “torch,” if you are a Brit) is your most basic tool. However, all flashlights are not created equal. They come in a wide variety of intensities, beam patterns and color variations. In this post I’ll deal with that last variable, and show you how to control the color of this essential tool.

Defining the Color Problem

While incandescent flashlights have been the norm for a very long time, today the most commonly found flashlights use LED (light emitting diode) technology. The LED is superior in many ways. LED flashlights are more resistant to shock, are easily dimmable, and last much longer than a typical incandescent bulb.

The downside is that LED flashlights rarely have the nice warm color that was so common in our old household Everyready or Maglite. Most LEDs produce a cooler blue or even greenish color. For photographers working in black and white, this is a non-issue. But color photographers might want to determine their flashlight’s color cast so they can add the proper filtration to obtain a desired color temperature.

Measuring the Discrepancy

Like most folks, I don’t own any special color meter equipment, so I set up a simple test using the tools that I had on hand: My Nikon D4s and Gitzo Series 2 Traveler carbon fiber tripod, an X-Rite ColorChecker color-test chart, Adobe Lightroom, and my Coast HP7R flashlight. (I should note that the HP7R is an amazing light, one of the workhorses of my kit—the fact that I’m using it for this test does not denote a shortcoming with this model in particular, but rather with the LED technology as a whole.)

I set up the color test chart in a dark room. With my camera on the tripod and white balance set to Direct Sun (Daylight on a Canon), I illuminate the test chart with my flashlight and take a picture. Notice the cool color cast of the resulting image in Figure 1? The daylight white balance of the camera shows us the natural bluish cast of the flashlight.

Figure 1. Bluish color cast of the Coast HP7R flashlight, typical of many LED flashlights.

To determine the exact color cast, I import the image into Lightroom and open it in the Develop module. The area at the top of the Basic panel displays the image’s white balance setting.

When shooting your camera with a white balance setting of Daylight, you would expect this reading to be 5500 on the blue-yellow axis and 0 on the green-magenta axis. The numbers we see here, however, are Adobe’s interpretation of my camera’s file. Adobe sees my camera as 4900 on the blue-yellow axis and +1 on the green-magenta axis. The fact that these numbers (Figure 2) don’t match the traditional daylight Kelvin temperature of 5500 is not a big deal; remember, this is just Adobe’s interpretation.

Figure 2. Adobe’s interpretation of my camera’s white balance when shooting with the unfiltered HP7R.

Next I grab the White Balance Selector tool (circled in red in Figure 3) and click on one of the light gray patches of the color checker chart.

Figure 3. The White Balance Selector tool.

The White Balance Selector is a great tool for color-correcting when you have a known neutral color in a scene, such as the gray areas of this chart (which I carry with me for times when I need to get precise color correction under artificial lights). When you click on an area of the image with this tool, Lightroom tries to balance that area to a neutral color, resulting in no color cast. Figure 4 shows the image after I click on the light gray patch. Notice how the cool cast is removed from the image, resulting in neutral grays.

Figure 4. The chart after using the White Balance Selector.

Figure 5 shows a magnified section of before and after the Lightroom adjustment.

Figure 5. Natural light of my Coast HP7R (top) and the color-corrected version (bottom).

Also after clicking on the chart, the numbers on the sliders change to reflect the new white balance (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Original white balance (left) and the corrected white balance (right).

At this point I am not overly concerned with the actual numbers. The real information I am looking for is which way the sliders moved. Figure 6 shows us that Adobe color-corrected by adding a bunch of yellow. This is the important thing for me to note, because it means that in order to correct my flashlight, I need to do the same thing!

Fixing the Flashlight

The next step is to begin experimenting with filtration. A common form of filtration for the photographer is a thin, heat-resistant, polyester filter that’s often called a “gel.” Gels come in a staggering number of variations and are used to enhance the color of light or to color-correct it. Gels also come in different sizes, but the ones typically used for on-camera flash units and flashlights are about 1.5 by 3 inches. Figure 7 shows how this size is neatly bundled into a swatch book. For the small investment of $2.50, the Roscolux Swatchbook is must-have for light painters.

Figure 7. Roscolux Swatchbook.

Knowing that I have to cancel out blue, I open my swatch book and find a common gel called a CTO (color temperature orange). It comes in several strengths, with designations such as 1/4 CTO, 1/2 CTO and Full CTO (the strongest). By tearing out the gels from the swatch book, I can cover the flashlight, illuminate the color chart and begin taking pictures of the color chart again.

After making some test shots, I load them into Lightroom and visually compare the charts with the original and color-corrected versions. After several experiments I find that the 1/4 CTO does a pretty good job of neutralizing the blue cast.

However, I also want to add a bit of warmth to my light, so I up the strength of the CTO to 1/2. This works well, but it does impart a bit of green, so I add a 1/8 minus green filter which adds some magenta. Figure 8 shows the color-corrected chart on the top and the chart illuminated by my Coast HP7R gelled with Rosco 1/2 CTO and 1/8 minus green filters.

Figure 8. Color-corrected chart on top, filtered version on the bottom.

This test is by no means superscientific, but it gets you in the ballpark. Taking the time to experiment with a few filters will allow you to paint with confidence out in the field and will save you a ton of time color-correcting in Lightroom and Photoshop. Of course, if you use the Coast HP7R, you don’t have to run any tests at all, because I just told you the results! A Roscolux 1/2 CTO and a 1/8 minus green combo work nicely. It’s also a good combination for the lower-powered Coast HP5R, another of my favorite flashlights.

Putting This Into Practice

Once you’ve determined which gels you need, it’s time to attach them to your flashlight. This can be accomplished in many different ways. The easiest is to simply fold the gel(s) over the end of the flashlight and wrap a rubber band around it. This certainly works, but is not overly elegant and may result in lost or damaged gels over time.

For my gels, I purchased the $4.99 LF100 Lens Filter Kit from Coast. Figure 9 shows how the rubber bezel cover can hold any of several colored or clear plastic filters that are included with the kit.

Figure 9. LF100 Lens Filter Kit from Coast.

I used a filter from the kit to trace and cut my 1/2 CTO and 1/8 minus green filters, then simply taped them to the clear filter. Voila. Perfect color and no hassle of taking filters on and off out in the field. The LF50 Lens Filter Kit does the same job on the smaller HP5R flashlight.

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Figure 10. A rusty fence light-painted with just the Coast HP7R (left), and with the same flashlight modified with the 1/2 CTO and 1/8 minus green filters (right).

However, while my test has provided the desired color from my flashlight, it works only when I am using Direct Sun (daylight) white balance. In Part II of this topic, I’ll address the issue of filtering your flashlight when you are using the common nighttime white balance setting of 3200 K.

See the continuation of this article: “Level Up With Light Painting: Correcting the Color of Your Flashlight (Part II).”

Learn more techniques from Tim Cooper’s book The Magic of Light Painting, available from Peachpit.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT