Tag: night photography

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St. Marks NWR Lighthouse Relighting Ceremony.

The relighting of the Historic St. Marks Lighthouse with its newly installed lantern was celebrated on October 31, 2019,coinciding with the 88th anniversary of the creation of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.

While volunteers interpreted the Lighthouse Keepers’ Quarters for visitors, the Refuge staff, volunteers, and Friends of St. Marks Wildlife Refuge prepared for the ceremony with an eye on the radar. A narrow squall line approaching from the west delivered a quick drenching rain and then colorful clouds as the sky cleared and the festivities continued on schedule.
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Planning for Milky Way photography

Capturing good pictures of the Milky Way in Florida can be quite a challenge. Rain, clouds, fog, insects, and bright moonlight are a part of life here. Did I mention snakes? Alligators? Lighthouse ghosts? “Area X”?

This year I had made several attempts to frame good shots with the bright galactic core near terrestrial objects, without much success. As the season progresses the Milky Way gradually moves to the west and the galactic core moves to the south. With the passing of the autumnal equinox in September, it looked like I would not get good images this year.
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The lighthouse and Milky Way at moonrise.

When I photograph the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge lighthouse and the Milky Way I try to avoid using electronic flash or “light painting” with a flashlight to make the lighthouse and trees more visible.

I used a flashlight in my early Milky Way photos but once during post-processing I noticed there was an owl atop of the lighthouse and decided to quit using artificial lights at night. The last thing I want to do is blind or disturb the wildlife.

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Improve terrestrial milky way photos using image stacking

Photos of the milky way are more interesting if there is some kind of terrestrial object in the foreground to indicate the location.

Lighthouse and milky way from 11 images with 20 second exposure processed using image stacking. (09-18-2017) - St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.

Lighthouses make great foreground objects not only because they show the location of the photo but the idea of this beacon shining over the vast ocean and the vastness of space is very compelling.
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Moonlight and lightning

The night is a wonderful time to take photographs. I particularly love to take shots of the Milky Way, lightning storms, and moonlit landscapes.

Moonlight is simply sunlight bounced off the gray moon and it has the same color balance as sunlight. Moonlight photographs look very much like daylight images except you can see stars and any source of artificial light appears to be very bright.
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