Pic of the Day: ChattaTrails

So I have recently tried to take advantage of the nice clear early nights, before the time changes, by going out as the sun sets to find a spot to do some late evening star trails of the city. These are my favorite image to create but they also take the most work. 

A lot of years learning the moon phases, star locations throughout the year, and tedious editing procedures have gotten me to the point where I can visualize exactly what I want to capture around the city and where polaris will be at any given time of year. 

The Light pollution from the city actually helps in the case of star trails. The reason being is that when shooting star trails, I usually want to shoot during a full moon. This is because the full moon illuminates my foreground subject while also drowning out a lot of the dim stars in the sky, only leaving the brightest stars to capture the trails. 

If I was to shoot during a new moon, I could get amazing milky way shots if I am far enough away from the light pollution, but it would give me thousands and thousands of stars which would be very overwhelming if I created a star trail image with that many in the sky. This is why having a fairly empty sky due to either the city or the moon drowning out the stars helps have a more pleasant and uncluttered star trail image. 

I have been shooting many nights, to put together a series of star trail images around the city, while the conditions are optimal. This particular image caused me quiet a bit of headache due to the fact that 1/3 of the duration of this shoot, the stars were covered by some low clouds that formed right in my composition. So it took me the better part of three days to put this image together, so this time I really hope you enjoy todays image :)