Heavens Above

Here we have my first attempt at photographing star trails. This was a 43 minute exposure taken at my friend's camp at Canoe Point on St. Joseph Island in June, 2005.

I think the composition of this could have been better, but it was the best I could do considering a) it was pitch black outside and I couldn't see anything at all through the viewfinder, and b) I had already had about 6 or 7 beer by the time I set up the camera. I basically just focused to infinity, aimed it at Polaris, and hoped for the best.

I had to clone out a few streaks from fireflies that flew through the shot, as well as clean up a fair amount of noise that resulted from the ultra-long exposure. This is still fairly noisy, but at least a lot of the random red and blue spots are gone.

Location of photograph: [link]