I have considered lots of locations already and below are some of my initial ideas with a photograph where available from my back catalogue or the Internet:
Haldon Belvedere
What?
A small folly/castle with three corners, windows on all sides with a large grassed area around the perimeter, with trees and undergrowth surrounding the green area.
Where?
Dunchideock near Exeter, just off the A38 at Haldon Hill, the map below shows the tower itself:
Why?The location has provided me with many amazing photographs throughout my life as a photographer and I believe it would act as a good foreground subject for photographs of the night sky and the stars, here is a photograph of the building itself.
Here's another looking at the Belvedere looking Northwards:
As I said above, I have used the Belvedere as a subject for photos in the past and have watched the area change dramatically, the building has been painted several times, trees have been cut down and planted, making for an interesting foreground subject which will be perfect to feature in one of my photographs for this project.One of the problems I will have is getting close enough to the building so that most of it features in the photograph, but I also allow enough sky to show the star trails in the sky.
I could use a fish-eye lens at this stage, but the problem with one of those is the lack of quality from the lenses that could be available to me.
Rame Head
What?
Medieval building/Chapel
Where?
Rame Head, Whitsand Bay - Right at the bottom tip, around 30 minutes from Plymouth City Centre, the map below shows how secluded the location is:
Why?Again this location has been the end of many a drive during the last few years, it'sa great location to get away from all the noise and stress of Plymouth City Centre and photographs of this location always portray this 'exclusion from reality'. This is the type of 'story' or contextual background I aim to achieve from my photographs produced for this project.
To give a little more background...
As the modern world more interested in getting things done quickly and efficiently, there is often no time to take a back seat and look at the area in which we live, as many of the students I know have never been anywhere other than, say the City Centre, or their own home town! Which I think is quite terrible, but then again I am a keen traveller and some people may not be as keen as me. But anyway, the point I want to make is that it is important for us to appreciate the world in which we live and by shooting these photographs of the night sky, I hope to present a part of our world which isn't normally seen by many people at all, as they are out enjoying the night life in whichever city they live in, or are sleeping up for the day ahead.
Again I have some photos of the building which I shot last year just to give an idea of the location and area around it:
A view from the bottom of the hill looking approx. South West direction:
A view from the side of the building, looking approx. West direction:
An obvious flaw with my photographs, is that they don't show the building from the Southern face, which is where i will be facing to take a photo of the North Star, unfortunately, back in WW2 a concreted area was built, appearing much like a platform, which ruins the appearance of the building, although a photograph may be able to be composed, cutting out the platform and jsut featuring the top of the building and the surrounding cliff faces.Light pollution will also not be a problem in this area as we are around 20miles from any large scale civilisation.
Photographs shot by: Matt thorne 2008
Haytor
What?
It is an outcrop of rock (a Tor) on Dartmoor, made of Granite which portrudes from the landscape into various knobbly shapes of rock.
Where?
Just off the B3387 heading toward Widecombe in the moor, from Bovey Tracey, the rock is shown on the map below, on the left:
Why?
I want to shoot some photos at Haytor as it is the location of many a family day out for me and it has a place in my childhood memories. I also believe the location is high enough to avoid any light pollution and will tower up into the sky and fill the frame as I compose the photograph to feature Polaris.
The location is very popular for visitors to Dartmoor which means the area is well recognised by most people locally, so my task is to capture a rocgonisable shot of the Tor itself.
I don't have any general photographs of the rock formation at the moment so I conducted a search online for some and came up with these, just to give an idea of the shape of the rock:
This image shows the rock looking in a Northerly direction
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/devonThis photograph below shows the rock looking in a South Westerly direction, showing the full extent of the knobbly pieces of rock which makes Haytor so iconic.
Source: http://graemesdesigns.com/lsdartmoor.htmlResearch
To help me with my technique and research, I decided to have a look at a book called ' The Complete Guide to Night & Low Light Photography' by Lee Frost which had some details about how to shoot night photographs and what sort of composition to create, which would be most effective for the final image.
I flicked through the book, to page 156-7 which gave a good account on how to shoot star photographs with an example taken at the writer's house. His image shows the house and the star rotations above which was shot on ISO 100 film, for 30 minutes at f4.0.
His image shows that the technique works better if you use a wider angle lens, as you can get more into the image and get a larger vortex created by the stars above.
Lee goes on to discuss the best choices of subject and positioning for the camera, which is to choose an interesting foreground subject and point the camera ideally towards Polaris to get the best image.
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