Friday Foto: Starry, Starry night...

The first line from Don McLean's lesser know song Vincent (his best known being American Pie). I always have this song stuck in my head when I shoot the night sky. I like shooting at night. Nothing is certain. I love digital; it enables you to see almost immediately what you have and how to correct. However, I have a setting on my camera that reduces digital noise (graininess and specks) when taking long exposures. With this setting switched on, I have found that it takes twice as long to write the image, meaning twice as long until you see it. So, for the first image, taken last night on the dock at the end of German Village, I exposed the night sky for 12 minutes at f4.5, meaning I didn't get to see the photo (to see if it was good) until 24 minutes later. This was my last shot of the night and I was half way home before I could review it. I like it. It's a point-of-view shot; a picture taken from the point of view of a person. Imagine laying down on this dock gazing up at the stars. This is the view you see. No, those are not shooting stars. When the shutter is left open on a camera for a length of time, you get start trails. The earth spins, causing the starts to appear to streak across the night sky in the picture.

The second image is looking the other way. You can see shorter star trails, exposed for only 3.5 minutes. I used a maglite to "paint" in the the dock, an interesting technique in which you use a auxiliary source of light to color in what you want to show up in the photo.

I'm going to get back into black and white film photography. It's been awhile and I feel like I could learn a good bit from it. Plus, it's very cathartic to me, being in the darkroom. I have almost everything I need to finish my darkroom.

Anyway, I hope you like the photos. Y'all have a great weekend. I'm so glad it's Friday. I have no major plans, hope to get some R&R in (maybe a beer or two).