This night sky photograph was taken along Lost Horse Road (near Hidden Valley) while attending a Night Photography Workshop in the Joshua Tree National Park in California. It was a very though schedule. Daylight was used for classroom instruction while field work began at dusk and continued until each person decided to go back to the hotel and get some rest. Each day we were required to submit 2-4 photographs taken the night before for critique. My sleep patterns are not back to normal…
The photograph below was taken during the first evening. The instruction for the first day was on camera settings, focus and composition. It verified much of what I already knew and it added a few things that was not aware of. I also learned a lot about using my camera for night photography. High megapixel cameras are not very good at night as they tend to produce more noise than lower megapixel cameras. I played with some of the settings and I now have a good setup for night photography.
The lights you see in the background are light pollution from the nearby town of Twenty-nine Palms. Light pollution is a major issue with night photography. You can see how much the light pollution affects this photograph. Another issue was the air traffic over the park. Flights to LA, San Diego, Palm Springs, Las Vegas and Phoenix was right over the park. Long exposures on planes leave light streaks in the sky.
This image was taken with my Canon EOS 5DS using my Canon EF 16-35mm f/4 Lens set on 22mm. The camera was set on Manual mode with the aperture set at f/4, shutter speed at 20 seconds and the ISO set at 5000. I used a tripod for stability. This is a single image processed in Lightroom and finalized in Photoshop using Nik Color Efex Pro.
You can see my new gallery for Joshua Tree NP by clicking here. I will be adding more photos to the collection as I process and post them.
© 2017 T. Kahler Photography
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