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You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On The Road – ?BillinGlendaleCA – Star Trails

On The Road – ?BillinGlendaleCA – Star Trails

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On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

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I’m mentioned that star trails are easy to shoot, and they are; however they take hours to shoot and often magnitudes more time to process them.  Here are three star trails photos, taken under differing conditions: very dark conditions with no moon to a light polluted sky with a nearly full moon.

On The Road - ?BillinGlendaleCA - Star Trails 2
Twin Bush, Pt. Mugu State Park, Malibu, CAAugust 30, 2019

I’ve shot the Milky Way at Twin Bush many times and thought that star trails with the Santa Monica Mountains as a foreground would make a nice photo. The cliffs along Pacific Coast Highway remind me a bit of the Red Cliffs at Red Rock. Prior to shooting at Twin Bush that night I shot the Milky Way at Leo Carillio State Park and met another group of photographers, it turns out they later shot in the hills above where I was shooting and you can see their lights behind the telephone pole at the right.

One of the challenges with processing this photo is the highway in the foreground.  The original stacked version contained car headlights shinning into the camera producing glare and airplane trails.  I spent several hours reducing these flaws in the photo to get what I thought was an acceptable product.

On The Road - ?BillinGlendaleCA - Star Trails 1
Red Rock Canyon State Park, CAOctober 25, 2019

Normally, when I shoot star trails at Red Rock I shoot towards the Red Cliffs. This time I decided to shot to the east.

On The Road - ?BillinGlendaleCA - Star Trails
Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, CANovember 16, 2019

Most star trails that I’ve shot have been taken in dark locations. This is the opposite, star trails over Los Angeles with the moon in the sky. Rather than a black sky the sky is more blue and the horizon is dominated by the yellow from the light of the city. This is actually a series of 30 second exposures with a shorter exposure used for the city to capture the detail in the cityscape.

This shot took a little over a hour to shoot, but took about 5 hours to remove the aircraft trails since the land approach for LAX runs east to west just south of Downtown Los Angeles.

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  7. 7.

    Zinsky

    Really nice pictures Bill!  You should start a website and try to sell them.  I’m sure you would get some takers!

     

    BTW – I’m still getting duplicate pictures and text on the main page and only one set when I go to the comments page…

  9. 9.

    Inspectrix

    This is a lovely way to start the day! Please do consider selling prints. I’d venture there are a lot of astrophotography fans here.

  10. 10.

    opiejeanne

    Great photos.

     

    I’m still in love with the fish-eye at the beach with the lifeguard stand at the side.

  15. 15.

    Melusine

    Beauriful photos, Bill. Remind me of “Starry Night”. Wonder if the Green Fairy grants the gift of seeing star trails?  ?

  20. 20.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Zinsky: Thanks, I do have a website with my work for sale(including these pics) at http://www.BillinGlendaleCA.com (or you can just click on my nym) and a Patreon at patreon.com/BillinGlendaleCA.

     

    @wanderer: Thanks.

     

    @Inspectrix: Thanks, about selling them, see above.  They make excellent Christmas gifts(for yourself or others)?.

     

    @opiejeanne: Thanks, I’m planning on shooting a startrail there when we next get a clear day.

     

    @germy: My hair really isn’t on fire about Musk’s satellites, my understanding is they’ll mainly be visible at dusk and dawn.  The thing with the Hawaiians is that they were blocking access to the telescopes, but I believe that’s been resolved.  Tom L had a piece on that here a few months ago.

     

    @Betty: Thanks.

  22. 22.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @zhena gogolia: Thanks, hope you liked they latest startrail, I had issues with getting rid of some errent clouds with that shot.  I shall return there once the weather clears up(and the lifeguard station that OpieJeanne mentioned).

     

    Could a kind front page person remove my comment out of moderation, I guess I went over the link limit ?.

  25. 25.

    Joy in FL

    These are beautiful.

    I like being shown that there is so much to our existence.

    Thanks, Bill : )

  29. 29.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Elizabelle: Shooting them takes a long time, but if I’m a dark location I set up one camera first for star trails and shoot something else with the other camera, so it’s not a big deal.  When I shoot in an urban environment, it’s just star trails and waiting.

    Any place with air traffic(urban areas and I’m looking at you Joshua Tree) means that I have to go though each and every frame(I shoot a series of 30 second frames) and ID those with air traffic and remove it.  The shot of LA  took hours since it had LAX’s landing approach.

     

    @A: Thanks, you might want to give a heads up to the developers via site feedback(it looks OK on Win10/Chrome).

     

    @Joy in FL: I’m going to try one closer to downtown LA, probably above Dodger Stadium, but I’m still recovering from removing air traffic from that one.  I shot one on Monday from the same location(available on my Patreon) looking up towards Griffith Observatory, much less air traffic.

  32. 32.

    Jager

    Great pictures, Bill.

    Our new house is at the foot of Conejo Mountain in Camarillo Springs, the sky here is beautiful at night, with a nice glow in the western sky from the lights of Camarillo, Oxnard, and Ventura. Years ago when I did some mountain climbing we were camped at 9,000 plus feet in the Canadian Rockies. A shooting star fell and woke me up out of a dead sleep at 2 in the morning, it lit up the tent like a searchlight

  33. 33.

    WaterGirl

    @A: That is on the list to be fixed, and I’m sure the speed of fixing will speed up when it’s not Thanksgiving week anymore.

    I didn’t see a single comment saying that someone had trouble finding On the Road, so you will surely have noticed that it’s now residing in the Category Bar at the top.

    Sorry, Election Year, people will have to find you under View by Topic.

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: It does it on the front page but it’s fine in the thread itself.  It’s not one particular OS or browser. It’s on the list, so there’s no need to report it with details, unless you want to for some reason.

  35. 35.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @WereBear: That’s with the moon and city lights, that lights up the sky but you usually lose color.  What surprised me a bit with that I still was able to see color in Orion, especially the purple from the Orion nebula.

     

    @Jager: Know that area well and past by there on Saturday, we went out to shoot in Santa Barbara with stops in TO for the Stagecoach Inn and Ventura on the way back for the mission(pics available on my Patreon).  My parents are buried at the cemetery over near Camarillo Springs.

  38. 38.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @lurker dean: Thanks.

     

    I’ve mentioned this before, but ALL of my pics in ‘On the Road’ are available for purchase at my store.  In fact I put them on my store before they appear here(if you want a preview of coming attractions).

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