GRAB NIGHT SHOT - 21 January 2015

Orion and Fins in Red Light - Arches National Park, File# 1514968

Link to Full Sized Image - http://www.tom-hill.biz/Galleries/Scenics/Utah/i-sZvcc8t/A
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After shooting at night in the middle of a national park, it's a bit of a challenge to walk back to your care through relatively unfamiliar territory. So much so, it's pretty common when following your headlamp to get off the trail and back track a couple of times. As a result, it's inevitable to be focus'd just right in front of you, as far as your light beam can go verses looking around and imagining shooting opportunities.

This time it was a bit different. I just happened to be looking up while I worked through this narrow opening between two fins when I saw the Orion constellation nicely framed. Even though I was hell bent on making it back to the car, I thought it was an opportunity to grab a quick shot or two to see what I could make.

I made one image without the flashlight being used--you know, the red flashlight. That didn't look so great. The featureless black blocks on each side of the trail didn't look all that great even though it did a great job framing Orion. So, I broke out my flashlight, the one I used a couple days ago to light up the North Window (see here: http://www.tom-hill.biz/Blog/2015/Arches-at-Sunrise-18-January/).

The whole shooting process for this picture took about three minutes. That included setting up the tripod which involved splaying out all three legs and 2/3rd's of the leg extensions. In other words, I work fast.

The only thing I had to do post process was to control the tone a little and apply some noise reduction because I used a very high ISO--i.e. ISO 6400--to really make the stars stand out.

Cheers

Tom

ArchNightSunset