Staring into the heavens
When I travel for work, one thing I love to do is get some star time in. Recently I was up north to shoot a couple hockey tournaments and got to spend some time between jobs under the stars.
The first night was in Shenandoah National Park. I drive through the park, stopping to hike a few times, during the day. As I drove I kept my eye out for a good spot to get a nice milky way shot. I knew the moon was setting early and due to the high altitude and remoteness of the park, I knew it would be a prime time for a great dark night sky.
I drove completely through and narrowed my search down to one tree on the side of a mountain where I could get my car to without being seen or without danger of being too close to any cliffs. I came back during the night and set up and began to shoot. I shot continually from about 8:30 to around 3 am. As I stopped the time lapse, due to the milky way passing out of frame, I took a few more shots to keep and edit as still images. I got this one with a 30 second exposure that I really liked.
Milky way over Shenandoah National Park
Another day was spent driving through beautiful Amish country in PA. I had high hopes for this area due to lack of major cities. However, there turned out to be enough small towns in the area to pollute the night sky enough to blot out the milky way for the most part. That was not going to stop me from getting a shot though. I settled on a spot near Blue Marsh lake and set up to get a star trail image that night. This is what I ended up with.
Star trail in Amish country PA
The overall goal was to get a couple good time lapses to add to my library of videos. I would say these were decent clips that may one day make it into my time scapes movie. I took the time to throw a song in and string them together just to display all that hard work. Hope you like.