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Camping under the Milky Way
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Camping under the Milky Way



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Taken at Bryce Canyon

Taken at Bryce Canyon
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cameraCanon EOS 6D

settings Aperture f/4.0 ISO 5000 Shutter 50/1 

upload_dateAug, 2013

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1606

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Awards

Featured
Contest Finalist in Camping Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Places Moments Stories Photo Contest
Peer Award
PhotosByJEM davidjprosser Tudorof daydreamsbymary0710 diegoscaglione ileanaandreagmezgavinoser NancyFlemingPhotography +55
Superb Composition
laurenmcgowan andreestevez rebeenaus EdwardMinaei cliffordgabriel RebWhimzy mistumistisen +26
Outstanding Creativity
arjovandijk nanceycon maged200524 twhamill glenvisagie annikalayman toadstoole +8
Absolute Masterpiece
Apperture_madness lilpotsphoto karimichelle countryside rajanpatel010 PiaScuro chefdrew +8
Top Choice
katekegeriseickstead rsnbrns gallmese susanrajalahughes stevenbest1962 cmbarden feistyvolk +5
Jaw Dropping
bronnieseeney Mij krischasky scmillion
All Star
robbiewade EmzMcManus AlanJakarta
Love it
canadianparrothead marklucas JohnDMcDonald
Superior Skill
jimdelillo nigeburr
Genius
matkujak
Magnificent Capture
tazzzer62

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Categories

4 Comments |
rmr731 Platinum
 
rmr731 December 17, 2013
Beautiful capture! Congrats on being a finalist!
TraceElementsPhotography
 
TraceElementsPhotography December 17, 2013
I love this photo! Such great composition. Well done and congrats on being a finalist! Crossing my fingers because I think you deserve to win!!!!
PaulRutherfordPhotography
 
PaulRutherfordPhotography December 17, 2013
Thanks so much!
roboto
 
roboto December 18, 2013
Awesome capture!

Submitted to Photo Contests

Tags

#milky way #bryce canyon #nighttime #camping #travel
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Behind The Lens

Location

I took this photo at Bryce Canyon National Park during a cross country road trip. I knew Bryce had some seriously dark skies, but I was amazed when I finally was able to see it for myself.

Time

This was taken close to midnight at my campsite. It took a while to find the right composition and try different settings, but I'm glad I didn't have to hike all the way back to my tent since I used it in the photo!

Lighting

To light up the tent I used a small dimly lit flashlight pointed into a full clear water jug. You don't need very much light at all for the tent since it's such a long exposure.

Equipment

This was shot on a Canon 6D with a 8-15mm fisheye. It was perched on top of a Really Right Stuff tripod and I used an external trigger so as not to introduce camera shake into the image by pressing the shutter on the camera.

Inspiration

I had seen so many great shots of the Milky Way and knew I had to capture it. My friend that was on the trip with me showed me an image similar to this one and challenged me to take one with a tent or fire in the foreground. While he was asleep in the tent I stayed and created this image to defeat the challenge.

Editing

This is one individual frame but I did use Lightroom to adjust brightness, contrast, vibrance. I also used a little bit of luminosity masks in Photoshop to help bring out the Milky way even more. But it was not a labor intensive edit.

In my camera bag

I always have my Canon 5D Mark iii in my bag, Really Right Stuff tripod, circular polarizer, 10-stop ND filter, external remote, and my lens of choice is the 24-105mm f/4. For night skies I usually use the 8-15mm fisheye to get the whole Milky Way in frame. It is also fun to break out a longer lens and get close up shots of different features of landscapes. Always helps to get a different perspective.

Feedback

To capture and image like this you MUST have a tripod or something very stable, but a tripod is the best way to go. A external remote also helps to reduce camera shake and you can take exposures longer than 30 seconds. You also need a dark sky with very little light pollution. There are various places on the internet to check out where you can find places with dark skies, I use http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/. It also helps to take the photo during a New Moon to get the maximum amount of stars. An f/stop of 4 works, but 2.8 is even better. I use the 500 rule to determine what my longest shutter speed can be. Essentially you take 500 and divide by the focal length of your lens. For example if you use a 50 1.8, then you don't want to take an exposure longer than 500/50= 10 seconds because you will start to get pill shaped stars. Or you can let it go for a very long time and end up with nice star trails. I normally use an ISO between 3200 and 6400. I use manual focus and test out different spots close to infinity and check the image after to see what is sharpest. At night it is very hard to trust the camera to autofocus on the stars.

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