TheFIX 024: Photographing the Stars with David Marx

Night Photography and Processing Photos of the Stars in this episode of TheFIX

Learn how to shoot the night sky, and how to process photographs of crisp stars and swirling star trails with landscape photographer David Marx.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• David Marx's website
• Starstax software for processing star trail photography

Photographs by David Marx:

The night sky swirls above the old Lower Fox Creek schoolhouse at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Kansas. This new National Park protects almost all that is left of the tallgrass eco-system that used to stretch across the middle of North America. To learn more about this gorgeous area visit: http://www.nps.gov/tapr/index.htm This image is not a composite. I shot this using a single 40 minute exposure with a little light painting to illuminate the old schoolhouse. I then used Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 to enhance my original capture.

Old Faithful erupts on a moonlit night in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Photography Tip: Noise reduction and sharpening go hand-in-hand. If you want to create strong images at night then it pays to master a variety of noise reduction and post-capture sharpening tools. I released a new video tutorial today for www.msjphotography.com subscribers explaining how I cleaned up and sharpened the stars in this image using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop CC, and the amazing Nik Dfine / Nik Sharpener Pro toolsets. The first eleven minutes of my tutorial are free for everyone at http://www.msjphotography.com/index.php/2015/03/photoshop-lightroom-tutorial-49-nik-sharpener-pro/ Msjphotography.com subscribers can watch the complete twenty tutorial in full 1080p HD. Learn more about my digital photography workshops and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom seminars at http://www.davidmarx.com

The Aurora Borealis shines across the night sky as the stars swirl above Glacier National Park, Montana. Photography Tip: This photo is a single twenty-five minute exposure. When I shot it, the Northern Lights were just a faint band of color across the sky. If the Aurora had been bright and active at this point in the evening then this long-exposure image would have blown out and failed. The message that I hope to share today is that even a tiny faint light source will slowly become brighter and brighter to the camera if you extend the shutter speed into the seconds, minutes, and hours range. Learn more about my digital photography workshops and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom training opportunities at http://www.davidmarx.com

Stars swirl across the sky in this twenty minute exposure from Whitefish, Montana. Photography Tip: Never stop experimenting! I shot a series of images like this one earlier this week. Those shots were good but not quite perfect. So I returned last night to the exact same spot to try it again. And the new results make me happy. The big difference between the earlier photos and this one is in-camera long exposure noise reduction. I though that I could do the same thing that my camera does internally in post-processing. After a week of experimentation with different Photoshop techniques though I am convinced that my camera gives me better results. But there is a catch! In-camera long exposure noise reduction doubles the amount of time that it takes to create a single image. And if the camera battery dies during that extended time period then I get nothing!

The night sky shines over the Matterhorn in Zermatt, Switzerland. I had the pleasure of teaching a photography workshop in Zermatt with Matt Anderson, and the Viewfinder Center for Photography, last fall. This was the view from our classroom! Great news: We are going to do run our Landscapes and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom four-day workshop again this September 11 -14. Details are still being finalized but will available soon at http://bit.ly/1dFP9o1

About our guest:

David Marx specializes in teaching night, landscape and travel photography workshops in beautiful places. Online, he teaches Lightroom, Photoshop, and image processing to a worldwide audience. Learn more about David’s digital photography field workshops, private Lightroom tutoring sessions, and Lightroom video tutorial series on his website davidmarx.com. Be sure to check out his upcoming photography workshops on the coast of Maine and in Glacier National Park. Don’t forget that in February 2016, he’ll be leading a workshop at the edge of the Arctic that focuses on photographing the night sky.

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Where's Jan?

Jan recently celebrated publication of her 40th lynda.com course. Check out her latest lynda.com courses:

• Photo Tools Weekly – a weekly tutorial series exploring Photoshop, Lightroom, and other post-processing apps.
• Up and Running with Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC – a streamlined approach to learning Lightroom.