Startrail Exposure sheet

These are my basic settings for single exposure startrails under dark skies, worked out through trial and error. They give a well-exposed image with information spread across the histogram... When shooting these its important to check the histogram as the darkness often makes screen results often look much brighter than they really are!

600s 10 min // ISO 2400 // f4.0
1200s 20 min // ISO 1200 // f4.0
2400s 40 min // ISO 640 // f4.0

If you are lucky enough to have a faster wide-angle - say f2.8 - you can just half the ISO's above. EG, for a 40 minute exposure you can use ISO 320 @ f2.8.

Enjoy : )

Landscape Photography: A tough love?

Above: Willow trees stand in the reminants of Monestary fields near Mustang, the 'forbidden kingdom' between Nepal and Tibet. 1/60th // f13 // ISO 200

At the end of one of the worst roads in the world lies Chandra Tal - Moon Lake, set among the desolate, high steppes of the indian Himalayas over 100 Kilmeters from the nearest town. I've ridden here as part of a 4 month quest to explore a passion for landscape photography. During this time ive trekked for 7 weeks, climbed a 6000m peak, been hit by flying rocks, ravaged by a horde of ladybird sized bed-bugs, survived a public bus drivers attempt to roll his vehicle over a cliff and managed to save most of my valuable possessions from the quick fingers of Kathmandu's street children, but here I was facing one of the toughest tests of my commitment... 

Landscape photography anywhere in the world requires a relaxed attitude to time and schedules, a fact I was learning after 3 days in a sleeping-bag sized tent waiting out a snowstorm which shows no signs of abating. My motorbike sat under a foot of snow and there was no sign of the single-lane 'road' id followed up here: giving up and leaving was not an option. Piled high up the walls of the tent, my gear lay in jumbled heaps of clothing, bags of lentils, pots and camera gear which grew higher as the dry floor area shrunk by the hour. I'd unzip the tent door and peer out into the whiteness, trying to decide if the current shade of white was any brighter than it was 15 minutes ago. The question "how much longer can it really snow for?" dominated my thoughts. 

For sometime I'd had this mental picture of a luminous, long-exposure startrail, mirrored in alpine lakes, and it was this vision which had led me up there, to the clear, light-pollution free environment at 4300m. All the elements were there -  the lakes and snowy peaks fit the composition perfectly, the moon wasn't set to rise untill early morning and I had all the gear I could wish for… but right then, all i could do was sit, wait, and attempt the occasional reverse raindance. 

Another day reading and staring into the whiteness passed agonizingly slowly, and then all of a sudden, late in the afternoon it was over. In disbelief at the sight of blue sky, I grabbed my gear and rushed out. 

At that altitude the stars are unbelievable. A vast veil of mesmerizing points of light dot the heavens, while the milky way's usually fuzzy shape seems to take shape, a ethereal sculpture encircling the sky. Standing there alone, looking out over the mirror lakes and mountains before me, the sight was a revelation.... and a happy distraction from wandering thoughts about the snow leopard which was spotted the previous night! The air was perfectly still, but bitterly cold: the kind of cold that drains camera batteries in 1/2 the usual time and glues bare fingers to metal parts. My carbon fiber tripod - my pride and joy - seemed less of a luxury up there. 

Equipped with a pocket full of warmed batteries, a camera remote and my 'exposure sheet' - a scrap of paper covered with scribblings of rough ISO / exposure  times - I setup high above the lake. After 4 days waiting, I was finally set to go when I discovered my cameras remote had decided to stop working, flicking on and off intermittently… Unbelievable! Refusing to be denied this opportunity I dug out a roll of insulation tape and found a suitable pebble to tape down onto the 5D mk II's shutter. After months of fixing fallen-off bits of my motorcycle with duct-tape and fencing wire i'd lost any reservations about this kind of mechanical blasphemy. With a clunk of the shutter and excessive binding with tape it was set. The lens cap came off and I sat down to watch and wait.

With previous startrail exposures Ive used a post-processing technique called 'exposure stacking' to combine multiple 30s exposures to simulate a single lionger shot. This technique reduces the effect of ambient light from light pollution and minimises the noise associated with high ISO long exposures. However, from my experience this technique also looses the incredible mistyness of the milky way, resulting in clinical looking, high-contrast startrails which fail to express the feeling I wanted for this shot. Instead, I decided to shoot single, long exposures, banking on the minimal high-ISO noise of the 5D's full frame sensor to keep noise at an acceptable level. 

Forty minutes later the cap went back on and the tape binding the shutter release was eagerly torn off. The screen came alive and flooded the area with the shots warm orange glow, streaked with startrails mirrored over a clearly framed lake. It was just how I'd imagined it. In excitement I collecting up the gear and set off down the scree and slushy snow towards the lake to make the most of the evenings 5 moonlight free hours. 

Left: An example of a 'stacked' startrail generated from 180 30s exposures. f5.0 // ISO 1000

Above: Chandra Tal and the peak C30 in a 40 minute exposure // f4 // ISO 640

My travel and photographic exploration began in Kathmandu almost 4 months ago, kicking off with trek into the Sagarmartha - Mt Everest - region. With 4 peaks over 8000m a vast area of glaciers it seemed a logical place to start in searching for surreal, exotic landscapes. The 28 days of hiking took me from lush green paddy fields dotted with banana palms, up to a vast area of lifeless, barren rock and snow, crisscrossed with glaciers and dotted with frozen lakes. Here the landscape comes closer to something NASA might beam back pictures of from one of jupiters moons than anywhere I'd imagined could exist on earth.

 Above: A self-portrait high above the Gokyo lakes in the Sagamatha national park, Nepal. 10 shot Panorama @ 1/50th // f10 / ISO 100

On my quest for desolate, exotic landscapes, I loaded up a pack with food and headed away from the main trails which had become a highway of trekking groups, porters and yaks heading to Everest basecamp. In a valley north of Gokyo, in the shadow of Cho Oyo, the 8201m peak marking the Tibetan border, I found what I was seeking. Arriving just on sunset, this frozen lake was shrouded in low cloud, a surreal, frozen world fractured by cracks across the icy surface. 

Above: Frozen World - An icy lake near the base camp for Cho-Oyo on the Nepal/Tibet border. 1/15th // f8.0 // ISO 200

This has been my life for the past 4 months: trekking and motorcycling in search of surreal desolation. I find my photography tending towards the abstract paintings of sweeping landscapes and clouds I visualized and painted as an art student. Strong, simple compositions, bold colours and hazy atmospheric conditions tend to dominate my favourite shots.

My current gear includes a Canon 5d Mark II body, 17-40 F4L wide-angle, 70-200 F4 IS, Manfrotto CX3 tripod, a 13" macbook pro, a couple of heavily heat-warped grad filters and a roll of insulation tape. Having spent 6 months at home absorbed in the trap of reading reviews, talking about cameras and ogling faster/sharper/better lenses, it's been revelation to realize its somewhat irrelevant when you break free and get down to the creative aspect of photography: you just make the most with what you have. 

Above: A climber watches the ethereal sunrise unfold from the summit of Stok Kangri. A Panorama stitched from 8 shots @ 1/30th // f7.1 // ISO 100  

On reflection, my favorite shot is one of the most recent, captured at sunrise from the summit of Stok Kangri at 6120m in Northern India. I feel this shot represents a culmination of the past months experience and developing technical skill. After days of rain and overcast conditions, my climbing partner and I set-off from basecamp at midnight under clear skies, crossing a glacier and ascending a vertical kilometer of icy slopes in darkness with slow, breathless steps. As we reached the summit around 5am the misty clouds erupted with an aurora-like light show, then moments later it all passed and thick grey clouds swept in completely obscuring the view. After months of fruitless sunrise shoots, I was struck by the sheer luck and dedication required to shoot these surreal scenes. The random atmospheric conditions which had to coincide to make it happen and the energy and time which went into getting there to witness the event. WIthout a doubt, landscape photography is a tough love, but in moments like that, when everything seems to come together, theres no question it was worth it.