Star Trails over the Tetons

~20 minute single exposure. The afterglow from the sunset wasn't visible with the naked eye.

F4. ISO800.

Attachment 91890

Love it !

wonderful subtle colors and great smooth water surface

Very nice, Cara!

Beautiful, Cara! I love the subtle tones in the sky and reflected in the water.

Can you tell us more about your exposure? I'm curious about how you arrived at the 20 minute time. Also, what time did you take the picture at and how long after sunset was it?

Hi PJ :)

Sunset in the tetons was around 9pm, this was somewhere around midnight. I'd been out since 10:30ish, I think. I just got a shutter boss so I played around with getting a series of 35 second exposures to try and stack. I have to find some freeware stacking software still before I can finish playing with those.

I'd done a series of high ISO shots at 30 seconds to set up a composition I liked, which was when I realized there was that afterglow behind the mountains. The moon was low in the northeast sky, not up high enough to fade the stars, but I think it added a lot of light to the foreground.

I was originally planning to try for a 30 minute exposure, but around the 14 minute mark, sitting in the dark alone on the shore of Jackson Lake with a can of bear spray in my lap jumping at every noise got too much and I figured I'd stop at 20. :)

Living in Chicago, I don't get a lot of time to play with night sky shots, so it's a lot of trail and error once I get to someplace where the sky actually gets dark. I'd spent some time at Yellowstone Lake playing around earlier in the week as a warm up, which helped.

I sent you an e-mail, asking permission to share this photo on our FB page. Let me know if that's ok with you.

I'm looking forward to seeing your final, stacked image. And I totally understand being nervous hanging out in the woods by yourself out there. I scared a brown bear off a trail on Teton pass on my bike a few years ago. Bear warnings are no joke :)

By the way, what's a Shutter Boss?

It's certainly okay :)

Shutter boss is a programmable remote from Vello. Nice for stacked images or time lapse photography.

Vello ShutterBoss Timer Remote for Canon Cameras with 3-Pin

Thanks for letting me share your photo on our FB page:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

The Shutter Boss looks good. And the price looks great. I have the Canon wired remote and it cost about 3x as much.

I have to try this when I go back in september, maybe a little chilly :) I know what you mean about the bear spray, I had Bug spray LOL I was looking for a fox that had a den under our cabin at Signal Mountain and the skeeters were HUGE

I look forward to seeing your shots!

I found an area my dad fished 10 years ago on the snake river behind oxbow bend. Made the mistake of trying to drop by there early in the morning to see what kind of light it might have for shots without spraying first. The mosquitoes just mobbed me. Got more bites in five minutes than in the entire trip at that point.

Great work!

Beautiful image Cara. I love the Tetons and you captured it nicely.

Nice work. I've been spooked being out there late at night (or early in the morning) all alone. I try to bring bear spray but forget it sometimes. So far I haven't had any truly scary encounters but I keep in mind that it could happen.