Balancing Rocks Oregon

Canon 7D, 8mm, f4.5, 65sec, iso4000

This summer I seem to be obsessed with photographing the night sky. There is something refreshing about attempting a type of photography that you know very little about and watching your own progression as you get better. Night photography also intrigues me because it almost forces you to be creative. Once you figure out how to properly expose the sky then you need to find something for the foreground to make the image more interesting. So in search of something interesting I decided that heading out to Lake Billy Chinook in central Oregon would be a good idea because of the balancing rocks that overlook the lake.

I knew the general settings I needed to expose the sky so the only hard part was figuring out how much light to throw on the rocks to expose them. From past attempts I noticed that the flashlight I was using was turning everything blue in the photos so last night I also used a couple warming gels. After a couple frames I figured out how much light to use and the image above was the result. 

Below is just the progression of my night photos from the past two weeks.

June 18th

June 20th

June 27th

June 28th