Otter Cove, Acadia National Park

Category: Nature

Tags: Acadia National Park, air glow, beach, Big Dipper, coast, group, long exposure, Maine, Milky Way, Mount Desert Island, night, night photography, night sky, ocean, Otter Cove, panorama, photographers, sand, shore, spherical, stars, workshop

Here are some behind the scenes shots of a night photography workshop that I co-instructed with Mike Taylor and Vincent Lawrence in Acadia National Park, Maine, July 11 & 12, 2015. The Milky Way arcs over Otter Cove to the south while the Big Dipper shines brightly toward the north over the Park Loop Road and the lights of Bar Harbor. Usually I would shoot a multi-row spherical panorama with longer exposures of the ground for a brighter foreground and more details, but I didn’t want to take that much time during a workshop, so these panoramas are stitched from eight single exposures with a fisheye lens. I used a lot of overlap because the outer edge of the shaved fisheye lens is not that sharp. Camera settings: 10.5mm, f/2.8, ISO 5000 & 6400, 30 seconds. Stitching data: 1 row of 7 photos 1 dedicated zenith. Finished panoramas are ~50 & 60MP. Equipment used: Nikon D810, Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8 fisheye (shaved lens hood), Promote Control, Panoneed robotic head, and Really Right Stuff TVC-34L tripod w/ leveling base. Long exposure noise reduction via Pixel Fixer, RAW conversion via Lightroom, stitched with PTGui Pro, and planned with PhotoPills. We have some great night photography and panorama workshops scheduled this year in Acadia: http://galleries.aaronpriestphoto.com/Workshops