Abandoned antique car at Ranch Park in Susanville, California, USA. Captured under the milky way galactic core on an early March morning....
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Abandoned antique car at Ranch Park in Susanville, California, USA. Captured under the milky way galactic core on an early March morning.
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Behind The Lens
Location
I captured this photo at Ranch Park in Susanville California, USA.Time
I captured the frames for this image in the pre-dawn hours, roughly 5am, on a chilly March morning.Lighting
The cosmos and the galactic core of our wonderful little galaxy lit themselves just fine all on their own. The foreground frames of the car and the area around it were lit by "light painting" with an LED flashlight covered in a 1/2 CTO gel to warm the light some. My light painting technique is inspired by Richard Tatti, a very talented nightscape shooter based in Australia.Equipment
I shot this image using my Canon 6D Mark II fitted with my Rokinon 20mm f1.8 lens, mounted on my Benro Mach 3 tripid with the B3 ballhead. I also use an inexpensive intervalometer to keep the camera shooting while I'm doing my light painting. For the light painting I used a Ledlenser P7.2 flashlight with the lens covered in a 1/2 CTO gel for warming.Inspiration
I walk in this park frequently and have always been enamored with this old car, which I believe to be a late 1930's model Chrysler. As I've begun my journey in to nightscape shooting and light painted foregrounds I knew right away the car had to be the subject of such an image. As noted previously, I admire and have learned a great deal from Richard Tatti in Australia and he frequently shoots old vehicles so I was certainly mindful his his wonderful work as I pondered the shot.Editing
Post processing is quite intensive in an image of this nature. I shoot up to 20 frames of the sky and as many "dark frames" with the lens cap on afterward. These frames are shot at very high ISO so I can get the stars sharp, without noticeable trailing. The sky images are then edited for basic tonality and exposure in Adobe Lightroom before being "stacked" in Sequator along with the dark frames. Sequator then blends all of these images together to make a final sky image with a much lower signal to noise ratio than a single image would have. I then use Adobe Photoshop to blend the foreground light painted images together for desired foreground lighting (in this case I believe there were 6 light painted frames) before combing the stacked sky image to the blended foreground image to create the final product.In my camera bag
In addition to the equipment noted for this image I always have a telephoto zoom lens , most recently this is the venerable 100-400 Canon L, version II used with and without the 1.4X version III extender. I also have an old 40D and kit lens that I sometimes set up on another tripod to shoot time lapses with an intervalometer. Extra batteries and cards are a must and I never leave home without a circular polarizer and 2,6, and 10 stop neutral density filters. For night shooting I always make sure I have a good headlamp as well.Feedback
It's almost always essential to plan ahead and scout in the daylight to find your compositions for night shooting. Planning software is very handy as well. I highly recommend several apps for this, notable Clear Outside which is very useful for determining if cloud cover will be acceptable and Photopills as it's such a powerful planning tool for everything from angles and times of rises and sets of sun, moon, and the galactic core. Of course fast glass and cameras with reasonably good high ISO performance are a must.