Stars in My Eyes

I’m pleased to to announce that “Stars in My Eyes”, one of my Namibia images made it to the finals of this years Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year, which is owned by the BBC and British Natural History Museum. Of course I would have been even more delighted had it won an award but since WPOTY is recognized as the most prestigious nature photography competition in the world, I’m really happy with the result.

I thought I would take this opportunity to make some comments about the technical aspects about shooting this type of image as well as some information about the 2009 Namibia trip.

Firstly, the reason MHT was in Namibia last year, was that we signed up for Marsel van Oosten’s “Namibia Untamed” workshop. Marsel is best known for his wildlife photography which have been awarded and widely published around the world. After seeing his amazing images and communicating with him on photography forums, I decided that he would be a great person to take a workshop from. His wife, Daniella Sibbing is a videographer and is responsible for those incredible videos you can see on their website www.squiver.com. I can guarantee that after seeing a few of her films you’ll be searching your diary to see when you can schedule in a photo trip. MHT has now taken and run quite a few workshops already, and our trip to Namibia remains one of the most enjoyable to date. Congratulations to Marsel and Daniella for running such a great outfit : fabulous locations and accommodation, flexibility, just the right amount of teaching and above all meticulous attention to details and organization. In addition to “Stars in My Eyes”, “Into the Light” was also shot on the workshop, which depicts a lone oryx at the crest of a Sossusvlei sand dune at sunset met with success at the recent ICP awards, the subject of an earlier blog entry.

Night photography is all the rage at the moment. With the improvements in high ISO performance, the ability to capture good quality images of stars in a static manner has become possible. Frankly, I suspect this will become rather cliche by the end of the year as everyone seems to be doing it but what the heck, it’s undoubtedly quite a lot of fun and it is a pretty cool effect. The technique differs a little depending on whether you’re facing towards or away from the setting (or rising) sun as well as the presence or not of a moon. Last year, while photographing “Stormlight and Stardust”, an electrical storm over the Grose Valley, I managed to work out most of the technique during a 30 minute shoot at Govett’s Leap lookout. This image was highly commended in the ANZANG competition 2009 and is part of the travelling exhibition around Australia currently.

Back to “Stars in My Eyes”. This is an image taken facing the setting sun. The advantage of this is that if you time it just right you can get a band of colour on the horizon with a star-filled night sky above it. If you photograph too early, the sky will still be bright and the number of stars captured will be less. Another problem is that often the horizon will be very bright relative to the rest of the scene and will become over-exposed. If the exposure is done too late after twilight, the colour on the horizon will be gone. Your best window of opportunity is

• a moonless sky, well away from any city lights to maximize the number of visible stars
• nil or very few clouds
• when there is a faint band of warm colour left on the horizon
• the sky above the coloured band is a deep dark blue (not yet black)
• when contrast is low enough that the horizon doesn’t blow out when exposing for the sky

Fortunately all these conditions were present when I visited the Quivertree forest near Keetmanshoop in Namibia. When shooting into the direction of the setting sun, it’s best to find a composition that is based around a strong silhouette. Any landscape is likely to be rendered very dark on a moonless night so this is the best approach under these lighting conditions.

Having settled on a composition featuring the outlines of two quivertrees, I set my auto-focus on them. In low-light conditions, using live view at 10x to manual focus is also a good idea. The aim is to shoot an exposure of 15-30 seconds which will freeze the stars as points. Any longer and the stars will look visibly lengthened. The best aperture to use for the stars is wide open to capture as many stars as possible but sometimes if I want a bit more depth of field in the foreground I might use f4 or f5.6 on my 16-35mm 2.8L lens. To make exposure at 15-30 seconds, you’ll have to rack up the ISO, up to 3200-6400 if necessary. I will usually use the in-camera noise-reduction option.

An alternative technique to take multiple exposures e.g. one for the sky, one for the stars and one for the foreground and blend them post-capture. However I operate on trying to achieve everything in a single exposure, which is a requirement for entry in many nature competitions such as the Veolia WPOTY.

The technical details for “Stars in My Eyes” are Canon 5DMkII, 24-105mm 4L IS, ISO 800, f4, 30 seconds.