About the Image(s)

My October assignment for Kelby One Year 2 was to create star trails. I'd not done it before. I photographed two nights at a pond in a nearby town.

I went to another town and found an old barn. I applied for a special permit to be at Acres Land Trust at night in Huntertown, Indiana, in exchange for Acres to use my image of 103 year old barn with star trails for social media.

I set up at dusk. You can see in my "original" that I fixed the keystoning from the wide angle lens. I then used "Sync" in Lightroom to copy the changes each of the 120 images of stars (I show you a single image with how the stars photographed and the keystoning fixed).

I photographed with my Canon R5 Mark II, the Tamron 15-30 wide angle lens. ISO 800, 19mm, f/2.8, 30 seconds for each image. I locked my Canon remote and sat for an hour to get 120 images. After loading all my images in Lightroom Classic, I went through each image and removed the satellites. There were a lot of streaks!

I then used StarStax program to merge all 120 images which gave me my basic image with strails. I then increased the highlights and whites and contrast. I went back and forth on the barn--I wanted it to not be too bright, but identifiable. The barn had benches and security lights and some homes on the right side and I removed all of that. I also didn't want the barn doors--which were new and metal--to show up much. I wanted the new doors to feel old, to go with the old barn wood.

I'd love your thoughts on what you like and what you don't.It was super fun to create, I can't wait to do more! Thanks!