ntions Haytor's popularity and also whereabouts it is.
So I set off at around 9:30pm to make it up to the moor for around 10pm, I set about looking for a decent angle to photograph the rocks, but one problem I found was that I simply couldn't compose the 'sisters' of the rock, the East to West sides which make the rock recognisable as Haytor. Unfortunately this view could not be composed into my image as I needed to look North, so one irritating problem to deal with there.
I solved the problem by finding a particularly interesting trail of rocks which lead the eye to the top of the Haytor rock, as you will see in my sample images and the more final ones; I have tried to create a pathway which leads the viewer's eye straight into the vortex which will be the star trails above.
Anyway here are some of my photographs from the location with detail about the photographs:
The image below is my standard sample photograph, which I used to get an idea of the lighting conditions on the night. I can clearly see that it is overexposed to a massive extent, where the rocks look like they are being lit in a daylight scene, which is not the effect I wanted. Unfortunately there was a pretty much full moon on the night which didn't help as far as lighting was concerned.
Photo Factfile
Shutter Speed: 5 minutes
Aperture: f 4.0
ISO: 1600
As these images were going to be part of the new technique called 'stacking' which I have researched in the previous blog entry, I will be shooting an initial exposure at 8 minutes in length which will be followed with as many 4 minute exposures that the conditions would allow, variables such as battery life, cloud cover and appearance of other light sources are among some issues which could arise throughout.
So firstly I shot the 8 minute exposure, the purpose of this image is to give the foreground subject some lighting, as the moon was out it did come in handy to give the rock a decent all round covering of light.
The idea behind the stacking process is to try to reduce noise within the photographs and also help to prevent external light sources from ruining a photograph, as if a person walks into shot with a torch, the exposure in which this person is, can be knocked out of the stack, whereas in a singular image, this would completely ruin the photograph and would mean the waste of around an hour's work.
Here is the first 8 minute exposure:
Photo Factfile
Shutter Speed: 8 minutes
Aperture: f 4.0
ISO: 200
I have kept the aperture at f4.0 to make sure the maximum amount of light will enter the camera and as a result, the foreground will be lit brightly and accurately, as for the ISO number, I have dropped this to ISO 200 to reduce noise in the image as it will eventually be stacked with many other images, so additional 'lighting' from the foreground of the other images, will supplement this image.
The image above makes the most of the composition which is possible at Haytor when looking North at least and the exposure of the image is about spot on to what I want the final image to look like, except I will stack many more images with additional star trails in them.
After successfully shooting the slightly extended exposure above, I set about shooting the 4 minute exposures; I wanted around 10 - 15 of these to make a decent star trail, here are a few selected images:
This image was shot for 4 minutes, but I did change the aperture setting to f6.3 hoping to reduce the effects of the ambient lighting from the moon which appears to have worked in this example, although it is a little dark, when stacked with other images, it should appear correctly exposed:
The image below shows exactly what can happen during one of these photoshoots, dam people with torches! Saying 'Oh what's that over there?? lets point the torch straight at the camera to find out!'. Fortunately these people didn't stay for long, they realised it was freezing and left like sensible people while I stayed to capture some more star trails.
If I was shooting a long exposure, single image at this time, the image would be completely ruined, however because I was shooting short images for stacking, I decided to continue and see if I could shoot enough images afterwards to make an image which would exclude the images with the torch trails:
Photo Factfile
Shutter speed: 4 minutes
Aperture: f6.3
ISO: 200
Below is a contact sheet from the whole shoot, which shows all the different photographs which I shot on the evening. You will see that many of them are the same as they are shot with exactly the same timeframes in mind to gradually build up the star trails to a final stacked image, which will also be featured here:
Below is a stacked image consisting of all the images which were shot prior to the knowledge of the torch beam being pointed at the camera:
Evaluation and a final Image
As for the shoot overall, it didn't go too well, firstly because of the lighting conditions. These were hindered by the incredible brightness of the moon, which caused photos to overexpose very quickly and as there were clouds in the sky, the moon would go behind them every now and again, making it incredibly difficult to check how long to expose an image for.
The second issue I had was with the people going onto the Tor around 30 minutes after I started shooting, which ruined many of the shots I took at the initial stages for the image stack. Although they arrived, I still managed to pull an image out which is usful for my project as shown below:
About the ImageThis image has been edited to become the above result, firstly the image was stacked using 16 images shot on the night, including the ones with the annoying torch light in them, I used the normal stacking technique to do this by opening the files into the statistics window, then the image appeared as a mash of all the CR2 (RAW) photographs which I took.
When complete, the whole stack is shown as a Smart Object, to which I am in Photoshop, then click (Layer>Flatten Image) to make the stack become a static 'Background' on which I can work.
Photoshop Changes
Below shows the slight alteration with the Levels Adjustment Layer, where I moved the right hand slider inward to increase the lighting for the picture as a whole:
The next image shows a screenshot of the alterations I did in the Curves Adjustment Layer. Here I created some more contrast in the image by dropping the line to a lower position, I also went into the Channel Selector and chose Blue, to which I did the same to increase the saturation of blue in the image itself:
Next I used the Hue/Saturation Layer to remove the bad yellow colour cast on the rock face as it distracts from the sky above, I removed it by reducing the saturation to zero:
Cloning
The most important step was to remove those unsightly torch markings that can clearly be seen in the stacked image higher up the page. I simply used the Clone Stamp tool to remove the sources of light from the image, although being a fairly tedious task, it is worth it to get the final resultant image which may not have come about if I hadn't persevered and used the potentially ruined images.
Conclusion of the photo shoot
The shoot as a whole was pretty difficult for me, but did inspire me to continue with my work as I did see several shooting stars out in the sky, which gives me that interest to keep going and stay on the moor for longer and capture a truly amazing image.
I believe I now have the technique nailed, I just need to work on composition and make sure to visit the moor on a good clear night with minimal ambient light, then I should be able to produce an amazing image for my project.
Bring on the next photo shoot!
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