Anatomy of a Composition - Corralled, Not Tamed

I don’t usually shoot star trails until the Spring when the skies are the clearest, but when the Muse arrives you have to follow it. The shorter winter days, as we careen towards the Solstice, mean we can take advantage of more night photography opportunities, and this old fence post on the Eastern Plains offers a sense of familiarity in our every changing world.

Creating star trails isn’t technically difficult, it’s just a matter of correct exposure settings, and have the ability to either take a really long photo, say 15 minutes or more, OR a lot of sort-of long photos, say 150 to 250 images that are 20 to 30 seconds each. The real challenge comes in the composition, deciding how the image should be framed. The old post and fence line have played a role for many of my astrophotography compositions this year. With the forecast for the Geminid meteor shower and clear skies it seemed a good time to drive east of Denver to see what kind of composition could be created.

Knowing that I wanted to place Polaris at the top of the post, I was relieved to find that the north-south alignment was easy. The real issue came from trying to match the vertical alignment, actually placing the star onto of the post. This called for laying a tripod nearly flat on the ground, and aiming the camera nearly straight up. With the camera just inches off the ground, aiming and focusing the camera became a lesson in futility. Without being able to get a good look into my viewfinder for true accuracy, the composition looked close but I really was certain. WIth a bit of “well, we’ll see how it turns out?!'“ I set the camera to start and it fired away for the the next 90 minutes. To my relief, when they got onto the computer my reaction was “WHOA!!!” I couldn’t have been happier with how it worked all out!

My take-aways from the night’s work and the final process; Patience, opportunity, optimism, timing - technique, intent, repetition - not sure which of these has the most weight, maybe that each will assert itself when the moment is called. Together they add merit to the process and each image reflects some portion to create the whole.

Anatomy of a Composition - Corralled, Not Tamed

ISO 800 • F/2.8 • 30 sec. - 150 images @ 16mm