Light painted tree and Milky Way

Light Painted Ironwood, Superstition Mountain & Milky Way


I was on a late-night outing to capture the Milky Way above Superstition Mountain and needed something in the foreground to add to the overall picture. I had previously selected this Ironwood tree in full bloom to be that subject. But in the darkness, it was just another dark unintelligible object in the near foreground. To give life to the tree, I had decided to "light paint" the tree to make it brighter than its surroundings.


Light Painting, involves an object that isn't going to move for the duration that the camera's shutter is open and during that shutter duration, I am going to stand behind my tripod and 'paint' the tree with the light from a small flashlight that I had brought along for just this occasion. The bulb in the flashlight is a filament type that projects a soft yellow light that will make the tree stand out, but not so much as to take away from the mountain and Milky Way in the distant background. An LED light array with a soft filter was tucked in between some of the rocks that make up the circular wall to highlight that area as well.


To make the picture, I set the camera for a fifteen second shutter speed and I had to take a series of five shots, which were needed to overcome the darkness. The f-2.0, wide angle lens was needed to capture the whole scene including the Milky Way, yet minimize distortion, while the focus was manually adjusted to capture everything from the tree to the Milky Way.


The mountain itself was lit by several homes that lie in the foothills and the homes were cloned out to remove the light distraction. The faint golden glow on the right side of the photo is the lights from Apache Junction about ten miles distant.

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