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Laurel Mill at Night

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I have dreamed of this photo for months and months, finally I was able to make it happen! I first discovered Laurel Mill using Google Maps last summer. I made one trip out to attempt to photograph it and was disheartened to find “No Trespassing” signs all over. As I’ve stated before, as a professional photographer I believe it is important to respect other peoples property, so I decided not to shoot it that night. After some research, I was able to find the address of the owner and wrote him a letter. To my surprise, he actually called me back and gave me permission to shoot there anytime. Now I just had to wait for the right night – clear skies. I finally got the opportunity last Friday night…

The sky is a blend of around 225 exposures, each at 30 seconds long. The foreground (water and mill) is a single exposure that is 2 minutes long. There was no moon and the road was too far away for car lights to light the mill. I had to do the 2 minute exposure to get a foreground with enough detail and light. I was beginning to get worried that the mist rising from the water due to the exceptionally cool evening would fog the lens or ruin the scene. Instead, I think it adds a nice softness to that area of the image. Exposure details are below.

Sky
Blend of 225 exposures.
f2.8
30 seconds
ISO 1600

Foreground
f2.8
122 seconds
ISO 3200

The foreground was photographed first, followed immediately by the 200+ sky exposures.

Carolina Night

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I found another great looking old house last night. This one near Coats, NC.

This photo consists of 169 30-second exposures. Facing east, the stars are rising from behind the house.  The house and land is lit with a combination of moonlight and headlights from passing cars over the 1.5 hour time.

1600 ISO, f4.0, 16mm, 30 seconds x169

I will not give out the exact location of this one as I was approached by the owner while shooting here last night. After briefly explaining what I was doing, he was nice enough to allow me to continue. There are a lot of photographers that wouldn’t hesitate at trespassing to get a photo, but I will just not do that. I was shooting from the road, and was respectful of their property. There was a “No Trespassing” sign up and I don’t want to be responsible for other photographers showing up.

 

Hope you enjoy!

Raven’s Roost at Night

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(Looks better if you click on it!)

Many of you may remember my “Buzzard’s Roost at night” image, taken at Fall Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee (Seen below). Today, I’ve prepared a new similar image – “Raven’s Roost at Night”. This one was taken at the Raven’s Roost overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Lyndhurst, Virginia.

“Raven’s Roost at Night” is a combination of more than 160 photos, taken continually and merged together in post. The tree and the rocks were lit with a handheld flash fired manually several times from different locations. We are looking west in this image, so the stars appear to be streaking downward as they circle around the North Star, which is off to the right of the image. The colors in the sky is light pollution from nearby cities, reflecting into the clouds.

Hope you enjoy!

 

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Night on the Farm

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Looks better if you click on it!!! 🙂

So I left the house late Saturday night in search of night scene to shoot. I took off on some back roads in rural Bedford County. Came across a few interesting scenes, shot a little here and there, then I was very excited when I came across this. The barn was sitting in perfect moon light. The North Star just off to the left (just out of frame). So I set up here and shot for about an hour and a half to capture the star trails. No artificial light was used in this scene, everything was completely lit by a very bright moon. Hopefully I’ll be headed out that way soon for some other ideas I found along the way 🙂

[button link=”http://store.malcolmmacgregorphotography.com/FineArtPrints/Landscapes/i-dQGxM6g/A” text=”Buy Prints Starting at $5!!” color=”red” /]

 

Rural Nights

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I’ve photographed this barn before, but as soon as I found out that no one lived on this farm (its for sale for a cool $7 mil) I knew I wanted to get back at night time. This is only about 20 minutes worth of star trails, after that my lens began to fog up from the dew. The barn is lit with a hand-fired flash.

This photo can be purchased as a print HERE – feel free to look around at the others while you are there 🙂

 

Buzzard’s Roost – Fall Creek Falls State Park

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Approximately 4 hours worth of exposures on a fairly clear night.

March’s New Spot – The Natchez Trace Bridge

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In March, I decided to visit yet another location that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now. I headed out to the Natchez Trace bridge near Franklin, TN. The Natchez Trace is a scenic parkway that runs from middle Tennessee all the way to Natchez, Mississippi. The best part about the bridge (and something that I wasn’t expecting) is that it was wide enough for people to walk out on. There was even a parking lot at one end. This allowed us to park and walk out to catch an amazing view of the sun setting:

 

 

 

When looking up images of the bridge, I couldn’t find any shots of it at night so I decided to head out there for sunset with the idea of staying late to shoot the bridge at night.

Once the sun went down, I was able to shoot the bridge from Highway 96 below.

This is one 30 second exposure. I ended up taking about 80 of these shots, stacked them together and that’s how I got the lead photo that shows the motion of the stars. That’s how far the stars move in about 40 minutes.

 

From Wikipedia:

The Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge is a concrete double arch bridge located in Williamson County, Tennessee, 14 km (8.7 mi) from the northern terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway. It is 479.1 m (1,572 ft) long and carries the two-lane Natchez Trace Parkway 44.2 m (145 ft) over State Route 96 and a heavily wooded valley. The 177.4 m (582 ft) long main span is symmetrical, while the 140.8 m (462 ft) long second arch is not, due to the slope of the valley at the southern end of the bridge.[2] The bridge is unique in that it does not use spandrel columns to support the deck from the arch. Rather than being evenly distributed along the arch’s length, the weight of the bridge is concentrated at the crown of the arch. The lack of spandrel columns results in a clean, unencumbered appearance.

The bridge, also known as the Natchez Trace Parkway Arches, is the first segmentally constructed concrete arch bridge in the United States.[2] The arches comprise 122 hollow box segments precast in nearby Franklin, each of which was about 3 m (9.8 ft) long and weighed between 26 and 41 metric tons (29 and 45 short tons) .[2] The deck consists of 196 precast post-tensioned trapezoidal box girder segments, each typically 2.6 m (8.5 ft) long. The sections atop the crown of the arch are 3.9 m (13 ft) deep.[2] The foundations and piers of the bridge were cast in place.[2]

 

Thanks for stopping by!

If you have an idea for a place you’d like to see me shoot, let me know! Leave a comment here or send me an email!