Milky Way And Autumn Aspens Above Lake Tahoe - Shot This Past Friday
This photo was a lot of fun to shoot. On Friday, my good friend Tony Spiker and I headed out to one of the best aspen groves in Tahoe to shoot some sunset and Milky Way scenes. Success! The Milky Way lined up where I thought it was going to and we ended up with some great photos. This one was my favorite:
click to view large
A "light painting" technique was used in order to light up the aspens and foreground. I usually use a bright LED headlamp when light painting but Tony had brought a Maglite that has an incandescent light bulb. What a difference! The LED produced a cool (blue) tone and the trees looked ok, but the incandescent bulb produced a warm (yellow) tone that made the aspen leaves pop with color. I think I'll be using an incandescent flashlight from now on when getting this type of shot in the fall...
Shot on a Canon 5DS R and a 16-35mm lens, with the lens set at 16mm. The ISO was 2000, a bit higher than I normally like to use but I wanted to try to keep the shutter speed at 20 seconds. 30-second exposures were getting a little too much movement/streaking to the stars. The aperture was f2.8, wide open for this lens in order to let in as much light as possible. No lens filters were used, a tripod and shutter release cable were used. A decent amount of work was done in Photoshop's Camera Raw feature in order to bring out the Milky Way and the highlights in the foreground a bit more.
How did I know where the Milky Way was going to be?
Over the years, I've used a few techniques and apps in order to find the Milky Way. Lately, my favorite app for this is PlanIt. PlanIt hasn't let me down yet, and it can also help you locate where the sun and moon will be rising and setting, it's also great for figuring out where rainbows might show up in a scene.
The photo adventure where I shot this can be seen on my latest Dtube video here: More Tahoe Fall Photo Fun This Weekend! (including a bit of "how-to")
Thank you for looking, watching, and reading!
Scott Thompson
Scott Shots Photography
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That is just beautiful @scottshots. Not many have a real eye for photography but you got it!
Thank you @prettynicevideo! I must admit that I am lucky to be in front of incredible scenes like this often, it increases the odds for me. Cheers!
Ahhhh there they are! Gorgeous! Yellow/orange versus blue/purple of course looks amazing and it's just a very very gorgeous scene in general :-) The PlanIt app is something I'll look into for sure :D
Cool! Glad you like that scene, it's a favorite spot of mine in the fall. And yup, PlanIt is definitely one to check out. Cheers!
Wonderful shot. Thanks for explaining the settings and lighting techniques. That’s very helpful to beginners like me!
Thank you and not a problem! Glad it was helpful. Happy shooting!
So beautiful. Outstanding work @scottshots. Hope all is well my dear friend.
Thank you @steemcafe! Things are going great, really can't complain. I hope things are great for you too!
Nice. Love this time of year.
Thank you! I love this time of year too. But I also love winter, spring, and summer too, haha! Going to try to get out again soon before the winds and rain knock all the leaves down... I hope things have been photogenic for you too!
It’s been a very short autumn. Already -7 C at night and wind this week. But last weekend was beautiful.
Oh wow, we still have a while before it drops that low (hopefully...) No snow or below freezing temps yet but it has definitely colder. I'm hoping we still have until the end of October before all the fall colors are gone but that varies every year.
Yes they are finishing up here now.
That's really impressive Scott, I've always admired galaxy photos. Now that I have the DSLR on my disposal I need to find a good dark place to try it out.
Thank you @mrprofessor! Have fun if you get out!