12-9-24

I had taken a trip to find a photo location for a nighttime photograph, which would include Mount Shasta. I drove out on some forest service dirt roads looking for a nice composition. I came across the Union Pacific Railroad tracks and found an old water tanker railcar stored on a siding. The car has apparently been there for quite some time, as it was full of graffiti. But it seemed like it would possibly work, as Mount Shasta was behind it and it was away from any highway or obvious light sources that may interfere with a long exposure night photograph.

After checking around the area and looking at different angles, I figured this would work. I thought about how to ‘light paint’ the railcar and took a few daylight photos to make sure the composition was to my liking. So, now I just had to check the phase of the moon. I wanted a partial moon only, which would provide enough light on Mount Shasta so it would stand out enough in the photo. Once I decided on what day the moon was favorable, the plan was set in motion.

To make this photograph work easier, I needed an assistant. With two of us there, one could work the camera while the other one did the light painting. Yes, I could have done it with just myself, but it would be a lot easier with two of us. So I grabbed my brother John, who eagerly (maybe) came along for the trip. We drove to the location and started to set up the shots.

To make this work to my liking, I would have to take several different photographs and then blend them together later in Photoshop. My vision was to light paint the railcar to highlight it as a foreground element. Then I wanted to make sure I had Mount Shasta exposed so it stood out as the background element. But I did not want to over or underexpose it as it was also an important part of the overall photograph. Once we did several trial and errors of both these elements, I thought we had these parts of the overall photograph accomplished.

Last, but of course not least – how about the sky? It was the wrong time of the year for the Milky Way, so I thought I would photograph star trails over the top of Mount Shasta. So, some more adjusting for the night sky to get the correct long exposure for star trails. Of course, I could not move the camera from start to finish, or things would not align properly. Considering it was very dark out, we had to use extreme caution not to kick or bump into the tripod through the night.

During this process, which took a couple of hours, a couple of trains rumbled by behind the railcar. It didn’t take a lot of consideration to try and include light trails going by, created by the lights of the engines on the trains. Thus, an added bonus was added to the overall photograph by adding this form of light trails.

I was finally pretty happy with the photos we took. I was pretty confident that I could blend the photos in Photoshop and make a nice overall photograph from our work.

• Foreground: Three photos – 24mm, f10, ISO 1600, 10 secs
• Star trails: 30 photos – 24mm, f5.0, ISO 1600, 80 secs