Transitioning from Star Trails to Points-of-Light (Patreon)

Up until about 2008, very few of us had ever seen photos of the starry night sky as our eye sees them—as points of light, like the 25-second photo on the right that I took of the Milky Way over the Bristlecone Pine in Bryce Canyon National Park. We had only seen 30-minute (or longer) star trail photos, like the image on the left.

The technology that brought about the change: That all began to change in 2007 with introduction of Nikon's D3 and Canon's 5D Mark II in 2008. Both of these full frame sensor cameras were capable of shooting at ISOs of 6400—with enough light gathering ability (coupled with a fast, wide aperture lens) to capture the stars as points of light by reducing the exposure time down to a few dozen seconds, rather than minutes—effectively stopping the rotation of the earth and the trailing of the stars.

New and unique images of the night sky: It is little wonder that most people were somewhat awestruck when The Huffington Post began syndicating my early 2011 nightscape photos to newspapers around the world. Most people had never seen these type of images before. They were only familiar with star trail photos of the night sky.

Why do star trails now? Thirteen to sixteen years later, some of us are reverting back to star trail photography (at least occasionally). Here are some of the reasons:

• Not every nightscape needs to (nor can it) include the Milky Way core. Like the above photo, or the previous photos I recently featured of Mexican Hat and the South Window Arch in Arches NP, the foreground features in all of these images are not alignable with the Milky Way core.

• Star trail photos can be taken any season of the year, even when the Milky Way core is not present—extending your nightscape photography opportunities.

• Old becomes new again. Some of the "retro" methods of nightscape photography, like star trails are starting to become unique again.

Please take the POLLS in my next post and let me know your feelings and experience with star trails...