I believe that those who photograph at night provide us “day
dwellers” with a totally different perspective on the world.
Star trail photography is a technique that many people may never
attempt but is not as difficult as it may seem. This topic will
be presented in two parts. In this article, I will discuss the
steps necessary to take star trail photographs in the field. In
the part two, I will discuss the steps to merge a series of
images in Photoshop CS5 to create the final image. Most
photographers have seen an image in which the stars make
beautiful arcs and patterns through the sky. Capturing these
images on film was a simple process with great results, one
simply needed to point their camera to the sky, lock open their
shutter (using a cable release) and wait for a few hours
(depending on how much movement you wanted to show). This same
process can also be used with today’s digital cameras, however
the results will not be nearly as clean and sharp as those on
film. The biggest problem with using a digi