Taking the Photos

Luckily conditions were perfect for star trails with the sky being clear and the moon relatively new. When photographing star trails, those much smarter than I suggest it is better to time your star trail photography around the time of the new moon. This results in less light emitted by the moon allowing for a darker sky. Another thing that has to be considered when doing star trail photography is light pollution. This can be a real issue if you live in bigger cities. I’m from Melbourne, Australia, often we will drive 100km ~ from the city, and still struggle some light pollution that leaves some light visible in the sky. This does not make photographing stars impossible but is something to consider if you do live in a bigger city. Fortunately, for this trip, we were headed far from Melbourne with minimal light pollution so it was clear and very dark skies. This led to some great conditions for star trails even if I still got some noise pollution through an orange glow from Geelong in the left of the frame.

One thing that has always acted as a deterrent for star trail photography is sitting around in the dark for hours on end while your camera exposes the earth moving on its natural axis (thanks wiki!). This time around I decided to come a bit better pre-planned and loaded up my tablet with episodes of The Newsroom and made myself at home while my camera exposed for 2 hours. I must admit, I love being in nature on my own but not so much when it’s pitch black dark. Let’s just say – I was happy when the exposure was over so I could get home and jump into a warm bed 😉

Using the pilons as my key composition, I arrived at the location around sunset with the intention of taking a photo on blue hour to capture an image while there was still a lot of light in the scene. The idea here was to get a good dynamic range shot of the pilons in case later during the night, it got too dark and difficult to get a good exposure.

Rather than capture one 80 minute long exposure I decided to take 8 x 10 minute exposures to minimise noise in my image. Unfortunately the 5D Mark II isn’t fantastic in the dark when it comes to noise so opting to blend exposures is a nifty and cheeky way of avoiding this. The end result was 8 x 10 minute exposures at F/5 and ISO 100. This was made possible by using an intervalometer where I specified the exposure time, interval between photos and how many photos I was taking. Other than occasionally glancing at the LCD screen to see how the exposures were looking, I then sat back and enjoyed an episode of The Newsroom until the camera finished doing its thing.

Post Processing the Photos

Blending multiple star trail photos is made easy through the Lighten layer mode in Photoshop. I simply loaded my blue hour image up and then added the 8 images as layers. With these open, I changed the layer mode to Lighten which then combined the star trails and created some nice lines. In case you’re still a little bit still confused I’ve put together a quick clip which demonstrates the process. It’s really that easy.

With the images blended I then went about post processing which I’ve put together into a headache inducing timelapse video. You might notice that I do a lot of flicking back and forward during the video? This isn’t the original edit of the photo and I’m simply checking back to the original during the edit to check how my edit fared in comparison to the original edit.

Through the mad scramble of the above clip I made the following changes:

Combined all images using the Lighten layer mode

Straighten of image with left over back bars fixed up using the content aware tool. I must profess – I’m a sucker for the content aware tool especially when replacing areas that are quite simple like a mark on a blue sky (more on Adobe’s website about content aware). As the black bars were appearing next to blue sky I used the content aware tool to fill in the areas and it didn’t let me down. Although with that being said, it can be a bit temperamental occasionally and force me to not be lazy 😉

Removal of torch light trail. I was shooting with Jon Sander who was off shooting at another location and decided to come back to see how it was going. After sitting in the dark on my own for an hour, I must admit, I wasn’t really expecting visitors and got quite the fright. As he entered the scene, his torch left a light trail which was removed using the content aware tool

Curves layer for the sky to brighten the sky up and emphasize the stars

Curves layer for the ground by pumping up the shadows and bringing as much detail as possible

Subtle hue and saturation change to the sky

Selective brightening of the pilons using the dodge tool

Silver Efex Pro Contrast adjustment layer at a mid opacity to introduce a dynamic contrast to the image

Below shows the final image with the layers combined and edits made. In hindsight I I should have stayed around for another hour but after being up for sunrise, shooting all day and sunset, I was wrecked and ready for a warm bed.

The final image – Star trails at Wye River. More photos from this trip can be seen in my Great Ocean Road post

Cheers,

– Alex

Exploring the Great Ocean Road

After living in Melbourne for almost 3 years it didn’t feel right that I hadn’t been down to the Great Ocean Road since moving over. Hyped for its stunning coast line and beautiful waterfalls I had been itching to get down there and take some photos. After planning it for a while now, I finally made my way down to the Great Ocean Road and the Great Otways National Park headed towards Wye River with some friends and it did not disappoint.

As much as I love living in inner city Melbourne, I do miss being able to jump in the car and get to great coastline within 30-45 minutes like I would previously when living in Hobart and fire off some photos. So whenever an opportunity arises to get out and photograph some of Victoria’s coastline I’m always eager to go. A while ago now two friends and I decided to plan for a weekend trip down to the area for a lazy weekend and photography.

Jan Juc

We decided to leave after work on Friday night and Melbourne being Melbourne quickly got caught in peak hour traffic. Rather than let the night go to waste we took a little detour to get some photos of the sunset as we made our way down. A quick look on Google Maps and we settled on Jan Juc. I’m pretty sure the decision was made on name alone. But luckily for us, the beach didn’t disappoint and was topped off with a stunning sunset.

The first photo was captured with a set up of the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40, tripod, B+W 110 10 stop filter and a .9 Cokin Z-Pro neutral density filter to darken the sky. One downside to using the Cokin graduated filters (other than the slight colour cast) is that you have to be careful where you position the filter. For this shot I positioned the filter on an angle (think 10pm on a clock) to have the filter coming down from the corner. This avoided the cliffs being gradually darkened which would of occured if placed at the 12 oclock position and going directly from top to bottom. For this reason graduated neutral density filters while great, definitely have their short comings and something you may want to consider if looking to purchase some.

Jan Juc Sunset — Sunset at Jan Juc (5 minute long exposure)

Ronnie Ling — Ronnie shooting at Jan Juc (Taken with my Fujifilm X100)

You have to kill time waiting for the sunset somehow right?

Wye River

As we continued down further we eventually made our way to Wye River a little later than originally planned. Wye River is a quiet little town situated along the Great Ocean Road that’s less touristy and more relaxed. I much prefer it over Apollo Bay which is often swamped with tourists.

Wye River has a stunning beach, pub, cafe and makes a great spot to situate yourself for exploring the rest of the Great Ocean Road. Our plan for the weekend was to shoot some seascapes around the area and explore inland with a trip to the Great Otway National Park which is home to Beauchamp Falls and Hopetoun Falls. Both waterfalls I had been wanting to get to for sometime now but being around 3 hours from Melbourne are a little too far for a day trip.

DSCF0171 — Jon capturing the sunset at Wye River

Sunrise reflections at Wye River (3 minute long exposure)

The Great Otways National Park

After waking up early to shoot the sunrise at Wye River, we decided to grab a coffee and make our way more inland towards Hopetoun Falls and Beauchamp Falls. I had seen the two locations photographed many times before so I was keen to get down there and photograph them myself.

It was a cloudy morning as wet set off from Wye River but unfortunately on arrival to the Great Otway National Park, the sun began to slowly rise through the clouds and create patchy light over the waterfalls. While not ideal, I find if you are shooting with patchy sunlight that shooting slightly under exposed is a great way to avoid over exposure and provide you with a more even exposure. For some photos where there was patchy sun light in the photograph, I used the adjustment brush within Lightroom with the highlights and exposure decreased slightly and painted over the sun lit areas. It works well to create a more evenly lit scene. Once again, not ideal and I’d much prefer to be shooting in overlight conditions where the light is even but you have to make the most of what you’re given on the day right?

A while ago now I put together an article on waterfall photography. If you haven’t shot waterfalls before and looking to get started you may want to give it a read to get started. It’s nothing fancy but just goes through the basics on how I photograph waterfalls with some examples of shutter speed and some basic tips.

Hopetoun Falls - Alex Wise — Hopetoun Falls (2.5 sec long exposure)

Jon and Ronnie photographing Hopetoun Falls

Conditions were patchy at Hopetoun Falls with some harsh sunlight at times. It wasn't ideal but lucky for us the sun made way at times allowing for some photos — Conditions were patchy at Hopetoun Falls with some harsh sunlight at times. It wasn’t ideal but lucky for us the sun made way at times allowing for some photos

Doing my best to avoid the sun with this stream photo of Hopetoun Falls

Star Trails at Wye River

As part of getting down to Wye River we were also keen to shoot some star trails (a plan that was always pending what the weather had in store for us). Lucky for us, the weather and conditions were perfect for star trail photography. Generally star trails are best photographed around the new moon of every month. While not exactly the day of the new moon, our time at Wye River was a few days after the new moon (this sounds like a Twilight novel or something…) and the sky was clear which created great conditions for star trail photography.

I must admit, star trail photography is something I struggle with. I’m not sure whether it’s the impatience of waiting around for the exposure to complete (in this case 90 minutes) or just the bashing around in the pitch black dark but this time I didn’t want to let past experiences deter me so I set up on blue hour near ruins of an old jetty at Wye River. The plan was to take 10 minute exposures at F5 at ISO 100. Through taking 9 exposures at 10 minutes I then opened them as layers in Photoshop and set the layer modes to ‘Lighten’ which combines all the images and only keeps the lightest part of the images.

In hindsight I wish I shot for another 90 minutes to capture more of the star trails but with episodes of The Newsroom running low on my Nexus 7 (great show by the way!) and sitting alone in the dark I decided to call it a night with this being the final result. The beach is situated below the Great Ocean Road which created ambient light over the rocks and pylons which worked quite well.

Wye River Star Trails — Star trails at Wye River (90 minute long exposure)

Thanks

Apologies for the Great Ocean Road and Great Otways National Park image overload!

If you’re ever down this way I’d recommend you make the trip down. Most flock down this way to see the 12 Apostles but I’d take your time driving down as there’s a lot more to see along the Great Ocean Road beyond the 12 Apostles. I do hope to photograph the 12 Apostles one day but for the moment other parts of the Great Ocean Road have me tempted to further explore. Time to get another weekend organised I think…!

Hope you had a good weekend and thanks for reading.

– Alex

Tag: Wye River

Before and After – Wye River