Monday, November 8, 2010

Star Trails at Mt. Pisgah



Lovely weather for a long drive. Ela and I set out to Asheville in Dada’s convertible with the hood down. The intention - shoot some pictures of St. Laurence Basilica, an old cathedral in the picturesque town of Asheville. Also on our agenda was a trip to the mountains to catch the golden sunset and some fall colours. Got some great shots inside the cathedral and later from the top of Mt. Pisgah. Now the hike up to the top of the mountain is another story and will leave that for another day.

By the time we started back from the top, it was long after the final residue of sunlight had vanished from the horizon. To add to our woes, there was no moon in the sky. We completed the 3 mile rocky hike (completely unaware of this at the time I made the trip; Ela I will get back with you on this one day for sure) back in nearly 40 minutes in the light of an Apple iPhone and a Sony Ericsson W580i. Ours was the only car in an otherwise empty parking lot.

Reaching the car, we paused to take in our breath and then looked at the sky. It was a beautiful sight. Millions of stars twinkling in a clear sky. I should think we were around 5000 feet above sea level and the air was so pure and pollution free. The view of the sky was unobstructed and presented a majestic view. We decided to try shooting star trails for a change.

A star trails photo is created by setting a camera on a tripod and opening its shutter for a very long period of time ranging from several minutes to upto sevaral hours. The rotation of the Earth makes the stars appear to travel in circles more or less towards the west. Neither Ela nor I had done much reading on such type of photography but there was no harm in giving a try. We hooked up Ela’s 10-22 mm with my Canon 40D and took a shot with around 25 minutes exposure. I will say, it’s not bad for a first shot!!

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Tryst with the Shutter Bug by Ramakant Pradhan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.