Compose For The Night

Nubble Lighthouse, York, Maine

I get lots of questions about how to take night photographs, and there are many questions about camera settings, and I will be writing about that in more detail in the future, but the truth is that the way I approach landscape astrophotography is the same way I approach all other landscape photography.  There is a healthy amount of research, planning, technical proficiency and patience involved, but what I want to talk about here is using a strong foreground in your photos.  Daytime landscape photography lives and dies by composition, and so does night photography.

Don't focus on just shooting the Milky Way, that's like just shooting the clouds in the sky.  It can work beautifully but anyone can take a photo of just the clouds or just the Milky Way.  Why not show an interesting location to go with it?  A strong foreground is they key to wide angle landscape photography.  Use the Milky Way as an element of your composition.  Find a location where you can place the Milky Way in the frame in a pleasing way.  Consider the angle of the Milky Way and how much of it you want in the frame.  You don't always need to capture a large part of the Milky Way.  The Milky Way looks the same every night, so you're not really missing much by only using part of it for a composition.

You can practice technical aspects of night photography by photographing simple compositions, such as the stars over tree tops, but once you figure out your preferred settings for minimal star trails with acceptable noise you can then look for framing opportunities that use strong foreground elements.

The Red Glow of The Bold Coast

The Red Glow of The Bold Coast

Cutler Coast, Maine

Buy print: http://www.adamwoodworth.com/Night/i-g6pBrjN

While this is definitely one of the darkest sky places I've ever been it does have one big drawback for night photography, and that is the Naval Computer & Telecommunication Station (NCTS) in Cutler, 7.5 miles to the southwest of where this photo was taken.  The NCTS consists of 26 towers with antennas, the largest towers being nearly 1000 feet tall.  Each tower has a red light on top that slowly blinks.  With so many red lights so high in the air, they easily create a red glow for any long exposure photo taken at night looking towards the west.

The NCTS was used by the US Navy as a radio transmission station for communicating with submarines, and went into operation in 1961.  Uniformed Navy personnel left the base in 2000 and the site is undergoing conversion to civilian use.  There are two giant antenna arrays covering an entire peninsula.  Each array consists of 13 antenna towers and spans over a mile across.

#maine #milkyway #boldcoast

Milky Way Over Head Harbor Lighthouse

Milky Way Over Head Harbor Lighthouse
Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada

Buy print: http://www.adamwoodworth.com/Night/i-CLPxsj9

Overlooking the Bay of Fundy at the tip of Campobello Island (next to the end of the coast of Maine) is the East Quoddy Lighthouse, which is often called the Head Harbor Lighthouse.  This is a constant on red light, which is why the foreground is bathed in red.

So this isn't a particularly amazing composition, but it's the best I came up with during the very short amount of time I had before sunrise.  Shooting the Milky Way at this location (at least for the way I had in mind) requires many conditions to align: clear skies, the earth rotating far enough for the Milky Way to be very far into the west so it appears behind the lighthouse, low tide, and clam enough conditions to want to be out on the tip of this island.  You can only reach this lighthouse at low tide, requiring walks across slippery rocks and up and down very steep and precarious stair cases.  The tide comes in very fast in the Bay of Fundy (at this location 5 feet an hour is normal), so you really have to make sure you're giving yourself enough time before the tide comes in too far, stranding yourself until the next low tide.

#campobello #newbrunswick #canada #bayoffundy #milkyway #eastquoddy #headharbor #lighthouse

Quoddy Head Sunset

Quoddy Head Sunset
Lubec, Maine

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Another shot from the road trip last week, this is from the first night that I was in Lubec, Maine.

Sunrise From Cadillac Mountain

Sunrise From Cadillac Mountain
Acadia National Park, Maine

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The first stop on my road trip last week was Acadia, we arrived late in the night in dense fog, which hung around for the morning and made for a beautiful undercast sunrise from the top of Cadillac Mountain.

Milky Way On The Rocks

Milky Way On The Rocks
Hopewell Rocks
The Rocks Provincial Park, Hopewell Cape, New Brunswick, Canada

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While sitting in a cafe in Lubec, Maine, my friend was searching online and discovered Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick.  Neither of us had heard of it before but we knew we had to go as soon as we saw the photos from there.  The next day we were in Machias, Maine, after a night on the Cutler Coast, and after breakfast we headed up to Hopewell Rocks, about a 4 hour drive away (if you don't stop).

The Hopewell Rocks are at the top of the Bay of Fundy, and can see tide swings as much as 50 feet.  They consist of dark sedimentary conglomerate and standstone rock.  The tides are eroding the bottoms of the rocks faster than rain and wind erode the tops, giving them their top heavy shapes.

Milky Way Cove

Milky Way Cove
Lubec, Maine

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This shot is from the rugged coast of Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec, part of the Bold Coast of Maine. This area has the lowest amount of light pollution that I've ever experienced. There is virtually no light pollution except for the on/off beam of West Quoddy Head Lighthouse (which is lighting up the cliff on the right of this image) and a lighthouse on Grand Manan island (the white dot left of center next to the tree in this image). The Milky Way was so intensely bright that you could see it reflected in the ocean with the naked eye. You can also see airglow in this image, the green and magenta stripes in the sky.

Did you know that we can bring back dark skies to populated areas? One of the easiest things we can do is to use less light at night outside our homes, use properly shielded lamps that direct the light downward to where it is needed, and use motion detectors instead of having lights on all night. To learn more about light pollution and how we can all make a difference check out the International Dark-Sky Association and www.darksky.org.

West Quoddy Head Light

West Quoddy Head Light
Lubec, Maine

Buy print: www.adamwoodworth.com/Night/i-RXQJscT

I just got back from a week long road trip exploring a few parts of the western side of the Bay of Fundy, starting on the northern coast of Maine and going into New Brunswick. We had clear skies every night! Lots of photos to come, but I thought I'd start with one of our first stops. This shot is from West Quoddy Head Light, in Lubec, the last town on the Maine coast before Canada. The light beams from the lighthouse are so visible in this photo because of the heavy moisture in the air. The light appears as beams because of the window frames in the lighthouse. In fact my lens kept fogging over and I had a hard time getting any clean shots.