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.
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 TrailsPost + Comments (42)