Shoot The Stars

Rich Engelbrecht is sharing his "secret" night photography location with us! Rich and I met there a couple of times recently to shoot the stars from this very dark and remote location. Unfortunately we had some clouds to obscure our view but we still took a few photos (see one of mine here):

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/f/2/600_270122802.jpeg

The red light is a radio transmission tower that can be left out of your photos with composing your shots differently. The glowing light at the end of the lake is from the town of Springwater a few miles to the south.

The forecast is for mostly clear skies and cool but tolerable temperatures so we may get lucky. If you come plan on dressing warm. There's always a cool breeze off the lake making it almost uncomfortably cold. Bring a flashlight because it's REAL dark out there!

This is a rare chance to try out night photography from a great location. Read up on your camera's operation so you don't have to use that flashlight too much while you're fiddling with the buttons and menus. You should plan to shoot in manual mode, with high ISO's (I shoot at ISO 6400 most times and may go higher), manual focus on "near infinity" (I'll explain that later), open apertures (f/4, f4.5, etc.), with exposures from 10 to 30 seconds. Turn on "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" on your camera too. Bring a tripod, a remote shutter release if you have one, and plan to use mirror lock up.

Whew! There's a lot to technical stuff to this night photography but the results are well worth it.

Here's a map of the exact location where we'll be. If you click on the map link at the top of this page don't let the "A" confuse you. Ignore the "A" and just head for where the arrow points.

http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/1/c/0/e/600_270127182.jpeg

The park is located a little south of the town of Hemlock on route 15A. If there's a sign for the park I didn't see it last night, and I just looked for Rix Hill Road going off to the right and turned there. Go past the two or three entrances to the water treatment plant and the closed park, and look for a place to park along the road before you go up the hill.

I hope to see you there!