• July 3, 2013
• By tobyharriman
• In Photos, Portfolio, Stars, Tutorials
• 2 Comments
• 6
• Tagged: 2013 astro bonsai rock california canon clear cove dark july 1 lake lake tahoe Nevada Night photography pictures sand harbor stack star stax star trails starry night stars toby harriman trails

My blog uses Stipple to make my images more interactive. Be sure to hover images to see what I mean! 

The past few days where pretty awesome. It started Saturday with a night workshop in Bodie Ghost Town with Jeff Sullivan. Then I car camped just outside of Bodie to go back in morning when they opened. From there I decided to head to Lake Tahoe to go to Bonsai Rock, which has long been on my bucket list. I got there around 5:30 so I had plenty of time to kill. I still can’t believe I carried my 4 bags, at once, down the steep hill to here! Was well worth it. So after kicking back and having a few beers I decided to set up. I shot sunset, which was decent and then waited for it to get a bit darker to start some more timelapses and do this star stack.

*About This Shot*
Canon 5D MK III
Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L II
ISO 3200
f/2.8
25 Second Shots
+Induro CT214 Tripod

Getting a shot like this take lots of time and patience. In total it is 180 images stacked which mean it took around 126 minutes or 2 hours and 6 minutes. I then also took a 127 second shot to get a better foreground. Which still could be better in my opinion, next time!

*Processing*
I processed one of frames in Lightroom 5 and synced them all together. I then exported them as jpg’s to a folder. I use a free program called StarStax (http://bit.ly/11f5YAT) I dragged the images to to program and clicked go.

BUT WAIT, what about all those pesky plane trails! 

Alright this part sucked. I went into my folder of images and went through every single frame and highlighted it if I saw a plane trail, even meteors.

Like this for example

This takes a bit of time but it was well worth it for the end result. After an hour of so of that nonsense, I re did the stack and was a lot happier.

Now you probably have a shot with decent trails but a terrible foreground. I brought that 127 second shot I took, the new star trail shot and masked them together using photoshop. Then a few minor adjusted and it was time to post!

Another example of a recent star trail. 140 images. Same method.