Under the Stars
Saturday night was unlike most nights for me as a photographer. Not that it lacked adventure, but the fact that it was so rich with adventure that it helped me create one of my favorite photos to date.
Ok here is how the night began.
I started my hiking around the Split Rock River up in Minnesota while visiting the North Shore for some landscape photography opportunities. Let me backtrack a little bit. While surfing the internet for inspiration I came across some star trail photography, specifically done by Lincoln Harrison. I have seen his work before but this time I developed a very strong urge to create my own. I decided that Jackie and I would travel up to the north shore and see if we could create our own star trail image. Unfortunately Jackie had to study for a midterm (part of being a student), so she wouldn’t be free this weekend. I looked at the weather and saw that Saturday night would be clear skies all night long. I made the decision that I would have to go it alone in order to capitalize on this opportunity.
I spent the week preparing. I studied techniques, and even built a bed inside my Jimmy because that’s how I roll (pun intended).
I arrived Friday night and began the adventure. I woke from my Jimmy and shot some sunrise images, then began hiking the trails to find my location for the star trails shoot. After about 10 miles of hiking all over the damn park, I was about to give up when I came across this old Shelter about a mile from the highway. I decided this would be my location so I hiked back to the Jimmy, packed about 50 lbs worth of camera gear, food, water, and warm survival supplies and headed back up to the shelter. I arrived at the shelter an hour before sunset and laid back and recovered from all the hiking I had done. Once the sun went down, the fun began.
I prepared my camera, shot the sunset, and began making exposures. 30 second exposures at f/2.8 with an ISO of 1600 and a gap of 3 seconds between shots (this will be reduced to 1 second for my next try as it creates a small gap between start trails). I started a fire to stay warm, but quickly realized that it was destroying my shot, so I put it out and spent the next 4 hours sitting alone in the cold. I was lucky enough to have a nice shelter from the wind at least.
The stars overhead were breath taking. I spent most of the time staring up at them. I could see shooting stars over lake superior off in the distance as large ships slowly motored by many miles away. It was an unreal experience. As my mind roamed free, I could hear my camera slowly clicking away and could only imagine the image that would be created.
After hours of sitting in the cold, I packed up my gear and started the 1.5 mile trek back to my car in the dark. I walked down the trail illuminated by my headlamp, trying not to trip over rocks, or take the wrong way. I was startled by a rustle in the grass beside me and turned my head. Illuminated by my headlamp was a giant buck. We stared at each other for a second or two, I said hello and kept walking. I was a bit concerned but he never budged. I got back to my car around 3am, hopped in bed and slept a couple hours before getting up at 5:30 to shoot the sunrise over the lake that next morning. (I will upload the images on mccreightfactory.com (my personal site) if you are interested in checking the other shots during the weekend.)
In the end I shot 4 hours worth of images. I struggled with my intervalometer settings, and thus only was able to use 90 images (less than an hour of shooting). This creates shorter start trails, but non-the-less, a good first attempt.
I learned a lot on this trip, and more importantly I had an amazing experience. It was a great way to reset. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer screen so to spend the weekend without digital devices was refreshing.
I look forward to my next adventure this next weekend!
Dan McCreight
