Stacking method used to create this shot, 1hour 12mins = 144shots (F5 / 30secs / ISO 100 12mm) 1dark frame and one frame exposed for the foreground, flashed several times natural flash. More details to post when its not 2:50am!
UPDATE
Ok am a bit more awake now, so here’s some more details…
I have to be fair that one of the first things that attracted me to night photography, was star trails. Its definitely one of the things that makes this field of photography so exciting and also exceptionally beautiful. Normally when I am out light painting, shots are taken in one exposure, one of the main reasons for this being that there are plenty of people out there who are ready to dismiss this form of photography as mere photoshop fakery, so anything that can be done to reduce the doubters and minimise the need for post processing is fine by mean. Besides this means less work for me ;-) Regardless of this most exposures are between 3 and 5mins, at very max 10, so any stars are a bonus and probably only tiny streaks. If I am looking to get some stars in the frame at the same time and even then this means an exposure of 25mins or so. The problem with this is the amount of time needed afterwards to noise reduce (usually the same as the length of exposure) and secondly lighting needs to be continually built up, to avoid fading or washed out colours.
So I was extremely pleased when I learned recently of a process called stacking, the best tutorial for this I have found was on a fellow photographers blog / site. Dan aka Liquid In Plastic has used this technique to great effect and a link to his very well explained tutorial can be found on the side of my page, under tutorials.
You should check out Dan’s work generlly as it is exceptional. The method he employs and indeed I did too, works a treat. I’m not gonna try to replicate his tutorial as I havent the patience and his explanation doesnt need adapting. The only thing i did differently was shoot RAW instead of JPEG as my 20D is a little old now and can get a touch noisey. Also I was shooting in a built up area with lots of nasty Orange Sodium Vapour lighting which can mean lots of light pollution, so wanted to be able to have some control over this.
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