Venus as the lone “evening star” shining in the twilight sky with clouds moving out of the northwest over the Waterton River, at Waterton Lakes National Park. This was June 14, 2018. This is a stack of 100 images for the sky and clouds, blended with the Advanced Stacker Plus actions ultrastreak mode normally used to produce star trails, but here used to produce cloud trails, to produce a blurred motion effect showing the motion of the clouds at this windy location. In addition, I applied a radial “zoom” blur to further smooth the images and motion effect. Venus is added from a single exposure from the end of the sequence. The ground and water foreground are from a mean-stacked blend of 8 exposures to smooth noise and the rippled water from the high wind this night. All with the Sigma 20mm lens and Nikon D750 on Auto Exposure for a time-lapse with shifting shutter speeds as the sky darkened.
Venus (the brightest object above Banker’s Hall and just in cloud), and the last of the winter stars (Castor & Pollux above Venus, and Capella at right) sinking into the west and northwest on a late May evening. This was from Scotsman’s Hill overlooking the Stampede Grounds. It was taken as a demonstration of using a graduated neutral density filter to dim the city lights while leaving the sky more or less untouched and unfiltered, to better balance the huge difference in brightness between the natural sky and unnatural ground. Taken with the Sony a7III at ISO 100 and Canon 24mm lens, at f/4 for a single exposure of 15 seconds. Using a Cokin P Grad Filter “upside down” so the dark area was at the bottom. No light pollution filter was employed. The diffraction spikes are from the lens iris, not a filter.
A long 4-minute exposure in twilight as a demo of urban car trails with an ND filter to prolong shutter speed, shot from the Zoo Bridge on Memorial Drive, Calgary, May 28, 2018. Venus is the streak at upper right. Shot at f/5.6 for good depth of field but to minimize sensor spot visibility which become a problem at very small apertures. With the Canon 24mm lens on the Sony a7III at ISO 100, and with the Syrp Variable ND filter at ND 9 setting.
