The Gorn Star Trails – Vasquez Rocks Night Sky Photography

Recognize this?  This is the rock that Captain Kirk ran up when battling the Gorn!  I believe this is where he found this perfectly round rock, just sitting on the ledge, and rolled it down on the lizard man, only to find that he was not killed.

startrails-kenlee-vasquezrocks-gorn-30sf4iso32095min-700px

Please click on the photo to view it larger and more clearly!  Thanks!

This is a little different from most of my star trails because I didn’t use a wide angle lens, choosing instead to go with a 50mm prime lens, the Nikkor f/1.4 50mm.

When I focus, I often shine a very bright light on the foreground and then use the camera’s autofocus to do the rest, then simply switch to manual.  Not here.  The lens kept hunting.  After a few minutes of this, I reluctantly abandoned this idea, and focused using Manual, continually tweaking until I felt the photo looked as sharp as possible.  Looks like I nailed it in the photo, but it took a while.

Title: The Gorn Star Trails
Info: Nikon D7000, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens, lens. 9 and a half minutes, each exposure f/4 for 30 seconds at ISO 320. Light painted with Dorcy spotlight. 19 April 2013 midnight.
Photographer: Ken Lee
Location: Vasquez Rocks, California, USA

Equipment:  Nikon D7000, Tokina AT-X 116, Feisol tripod.

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You can see more of these photos here  on my Ken Lee Photography Facebook Page (poke your head in, say hi, and “like” the page if you would, uh, like). We discuss long exposure, night sky, star trails, and coastal long exposure photography, as well as lots of other things, so I hope you can join us!

And you can go to the Ken Lee Photography website, which has more photos from Ken Lee.  Thank you very much for visiting!

 

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