Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, NC

Hello again,

I made a recent trip to Cape Hatteras Lighthouse to try some more startrail photos. I walked away with a few images that I was happy with and wanted to share. All the photos except the milky way picture were taken in the same night.


This one is my favorite startrail picture to date:

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Those lighthouse pics are top notch, well done and thanks for sharing.

I am afraid star trails don't do it for me. Kind of a cute gimmick but too unnatural to mean anything to me. The second shot, however, is a knock out! Really nice.

I rarely look in this section; I like it but simply am focused elsewhere, but seeing the title Lighthouse caught my attention. Fantastic work! The lighthouse brings scale to the image, and makes it more real than so many shots of just twirling light streaks. The boldness of the colors is also attractive. I think this just changed my next project. That goes to show the impact your images just had.

the first photo is great, how many shots did you stack?

Nice captures and processing, star trails aren't my favorite however I do like #3 over the other ST shots. I like that you captured the curvature north and south of the celestial equator and
it doesn't seem to be so "busy" JMO

Thanks for the comments everyone! I'm currently working on taking photos of the same locations at the Outer Banks showcasing various different scenes. I'm trying for sunrise, sunset, milky way, startrails, inclement weather, etc. at the same location. I could never get a decent night at Hatteras due to humidity or incorrect forecasts to take a startrail photo. The weather at the Hatteras Lightouse has definitely proven to be a challenge.

I do agree that the startrail photos look a little unnatural on their own, but I think they'll help balance out the overall series of images I'm after. The good thing about the startrail photos is you can usually walk away with an interesting frame (meteor/iridium flare), a startrail image, or a nice 5-10 second timelapse video.

The first image was 37 frames taken with a 6d, 30 sec, 14mm f2.8, ISO 3200

I like the lighthouse in #1 the best due to the angle omitting the actual light which I think brings out the pattern on the lighthouse in a way that contrasts the direction the stars appear to be "moving". Excellent detail in the lighthouse itself. The star trail is busy but there are just so many stars in the skies on the OBX that's what you end up with!

In the other images, the light being blown out and so large is somewhat distracting. If you go back again, try to figure out the sequence of the light. You'll be able to count the "on/off" periods and time your captures to include the light long enough to properly expose everything which would make these shots perfect. All in all, great job!

The second light house image is absolutely amazing.

nice OBX set

Great shots. I haven't been to the OBX in 10 years since moving to CO. This makes me want to plan a trip back there.

You landscape images are proving only one thing: Your expertise in field to full extend.
You have been different, to the better, if not the Best side of "Different" and that makes a significant impact.

Your picture of Orion is a welcome to the field and the usual over cooked image, we all have created once upon the time.

Great stuff and specially keep up your excellent job on sticking to one location under different climate conditions. In no time you will own your own gallery of impressiveness and a great opening already here.

very nice! i went up there twice during the summer but it was stormy rainy both times!

Thanks again for the comments everyone.

That's the tough part about the hatteras lighthouse, it has two constant rotating lights. I timed my exposures in the milky way photo to avoid the light shining directly towards the camera, but no way to avoid blowing out the light for the startrail photos that I have found.

Hopefully I can get a pass for that one! I haven't invested near enough time on DSO's, one day I'll get a mount and take advantage of those dark skies.

Hopefully it is alright to update my old thread. The conditions were too good to pass up the other night/morning and I made it down to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Unfortunately I moved so this was about 5 hours out of the way. I had tried several times before and the trips were ruined by weather or milky way positioning, but I've been determined to get this photo. I got down to the lighthouse around 2:15am and wanted to take a 2 hour timelapse and some panorama photos. I had it planned so I would be out there before moonset, which was ~3:40am that morning. The moon was setting at my back and the milky way was rising behind the lighthouse over the ocean at roughly the same time.

I usually take two cameras and tripods and setup one for a timelapse/startrail while walking around with the other. I'll only do this if I have the place to myself. Luckily from 2-5am it was cold and windy so it was just me and the deer. I setup my T3i with the Samyang 14mm lens and let it take roughly 2 hours worth of exposures. I thought it turned out rather well, especially the shadows coming across the frame as the moon sets at my back.

Timelapse can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/1240​47209

While the timelapse was going I walked around and tried to find some interesting angles to frame a panorama. This first one has to be my favorite picture to date. The framing worked out better than expected and I had a tiny bit of moon allowing the foreground to be slightly illuminated. I believe I used 9 images for the panorama. This one had a major stitching error that took quite some time to correct.

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