In my opinion this is one of Mount Hood’s most under rated vantage points, especially in the winter months. We arrived just after midnight as the rising moon was sitting low in the sky casting shadows and amazing light over most of the landscape.
With a tall snow embankment on my left, the moon’s light didn’t touch the foreground but blazed it’s light across the remainder of the landscape. Slight cloud cover gives a nice glow to the stars with Mount Hood looming in the background. When printed full size you can see the snow flakes sparkle in the light, but standing there it almost felt like there were small blinking lights covering the ground.
This photo is composed of two shots ( same composition ), 1 at a short exposure time / high ISO to capture the stars without creating star trails. Another shot was taken at lower ISO and longer exposure time to capture the rest of the scene without generating as much noise. These two shots were taken seconds apart to capture what I saw that night. Fresh snow + night skies = Good times!
If you’re interested in learning how to post process or take shots like this, Michael Shaiblum and I just launched our new website http://ift.tt/19O2rOv which is solely dedicated to night sky & star photography education, tutorials, mentoring and workshops.
Head on over to the website and check out my Free Star Photography Tutorial for Milky Way & Star Trail shots and our Star Photography Post Processing Video Tutorials where we teach you our post processing workflow from start to finish!
I also wrote a Star Photography Tutorial for the Editors at 500PX that you may enjoy. — > 500PX Star Photography Tutorial
via 500px http://ift.tt/1uYXMQ3
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