First Night On the Red Planet (Arches National Park, UT)

ken

a good kind of terrible
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Arches National Park in Utah can look like another world, especially if given a little push with some light painting using red gels. This is Double Arch, facing south, looking straight at the amazing Milky Way. This is a long exposure night sky photo of the Milky Way that with some illumination of the massive Double Arch rock formation with LED flashlights. I hope you like it!

Title: First Night OnThe Red Planet
Photo: Ken Lee Photography
 
Thank you so much!

I didn't even realize this had posted because the site kept grinding and whirring, and I finally gave up and closed the browser window!
 
Beautiful photo. I wouldn't know where to begin to create a photo like that, but I sure wish I could.
 
Beautiful photo. I wouldn't know where to begin to create a photo like that, but I sure wish I could.

First of all, thank you to you and everyone else for all the very very very kind words about the photo.

This one definitely took a little bit of doing, and was a time-consuming process at the location, mostly because there was a very very specific look that I was going after which involved keeping the camera situated for a long time, and it simply was time-consuming to pull off (light painting it exactly how I wanted it, using a long exposure with low ISO which results in less noise but considerably more time creating it, etc.).

But a lot of my other photos that look somewhat like this were less time-consuming while on location. The one below would be one such example, where the setup time, etc. were relatively short compared, maybe taking five or ten minutes to nail this one as opposed to several hours and a lot of running around.

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This was also taken in Arches National Park, and is a photo of Delicate Arch.
 
Excellent picture. I've actually stood in that exact spot....just during the day.

It's magnificent during the day for sure.

I have wanted to go to Arches N.P. since I was a kid, and to be able to see it finally was a dream come true. Truly a fantastic place.
 
Can't see the pretty stuff in the hazy skies of LA.

Actually, Los Angeles is surprisingly great for a large metropolitan city. You drive up to the San Gabriel Mountains, the coast in Malibu, the desert in Mojave, or Mt. Pinos near Frazier Park, and you can get good star shots. We've generally got it much better than most people living on the East Coast or the Midwest, where it's challenging to find dark skies. We're surrounded by mountains and deserts, so it's actually pretty great.

The following photos, taken from Mt. Pinos, are just an hour's drive from the city.

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These are magnificent shots Ken. Since I'm not a photography expert, is light painting the same as double exposure? You do a long exposure to get the starts and then use a flash for the arches/trees etc?

What happens if a cloud comes by during the longer exposure (if it's really long):shrug:
 
These are magnificent shots Ken. Since I'm not a photography expert, is light painting the same as double exposure? You do a long exposure to get the starts and then use a flash for the arches/trees etc?

What happens if a cloud comes by during the longer exposure (if it's really long):shrug:

Light painting has several definitions/methods, but in the photos I am doing, I am using handheld light sources to illuminate foreground objects, even super large ones such as these. They are not done in double exposures, although some photographers may blend more than one picture (one with light painting, one without; two with light painting; one with no mistakes in a certain region to mask one that was otherwise good but had a mistake in one region; and on and on).

The handheld light sources I personally use are either very bright LED flashlights, such as a Dorcy or a Streamlight, or speedlights (flash attachment), although I always use the speedlights off the camera, triggering them manually. I did not use a flash for the red Double Arch photo because it didn't have enough reach (power).

If clouds come by during a long exposure, they become part of the photo. Sometimes, many of us use a technique called "stacking", which basically involves shooting photos in succession. So for example, I might shoot 30 photos that are 2-minute exposures each, and then "stack", or blend them together, using a program such as Photoshop or StarStax. If clouds begin entering the frame, I may choose to keep them in or simply stop using the frames when the clouds enter. Or if I am shooting a single long exposure (not "stacking", I may look and see clouds coming in and make a decision as to whether to stop the exposure or simply embrace the clouds and not care. If the clouds are moving relatively quickly, the stars (or star trails) can still shine through.

When I give photography workshops, I will ask the participants to consider the clouds. How are they moving? Which direction? Are they intermittent? All these effect the long exposure, and can make or break a photo. Do you want clouds? How do you want them to look?

The following example is an admittedly surreal photo of a light painted rock (again, using a handheld flashlight with a red gel in front) to illuminate the rock, and this time, embracing the quick moving clouds fully in the hopes that they add to the photo.

And again, because the clouds were moving quickly, the star trails still managed to shine through. It's a chance you take when you are taking the photos, although certainly experience with clouds in long exposure night sky photography help when making this decision, so it's not a complete crap shoot.

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The above shot is done using the "stacking" technique for star trails.

The Mt. Pinos photos are a single exposure.

The first shot of Double Arch was an attempt at a single exposure, but I could not pull it off because of how enormous the rock formation was, and complicated the light painting was, so I had to admit this early on and blend some of the light painted rock formation together. It was a complicated shot that took a long time and a lot of work.
 
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Say "hello" to my new desktops. :thu:
Absolutely beautiful photography at the highest level.

Thank you. I'm glad you like them. I feel I am still learning about night sky photography, light painting, star trails, and long exposure photography, so I like to stay humble and learn a lot from photographers around me, work hard, absorb a lot of knowledge, and practice. There's so much to learn, and it's extremely fun and exciting.
 
Thanks for the explanation Ken. While I don't see getting back into photography I love seeing what others do and how it's done. It's a fascinating hobby
 
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