Night Photography Worksho Matt Hill Night Photography Worksho Matt Hill

Bannerman Island on a New Moon

Our latest workshop on Pollepell Island, a.k.a. Bannerman Island, was held this weekend past.

We had a more than full class of seven and the weather decided to cooperate with us. In amazing ways.

After many hours of group light painting, star point and star trails work, we broke out to do some free shooting. I was crazy excited to exercise some files and ideas with my new Pixelstick. Like this group shot!

And worked on capturing some Milky Way shots. Hard to do so close to Beacon/Newburgh and West Point. 

And then I made this monster star trail stack of the Bannerman Armory over an hour and twenty minutes. (Twelve, ten-minute exposures). The lights along the grass and stairs are Gabe's light-painting class :-) Thanks, everyone! You made the armory look so very good.

I then set up my 14-24mm on the Nikon D700 facing south for some long star trail stacks form 2-4am and the dew point caused lots of water to form on the surface of my lens, The result was this interesting, almost analog-feeling star trail stack.

In the morning, I broke out the IR-converted Canon G9. Here are Gabe, then our friend and fellow night photographer Rob Yasinsac

On the boat ride out, I was fortunate to capture all these morning-sun drenched IR shots of the island. Thanks for taking us around the south side, Thom :-) 

A future update will include some 3+ hour film shots from my 4x5" camera. What a wonderful night and great group of students.

 
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