Night Wishes

I am really having a lot of fun with my Canon 5D Mark II. This camera is allowing me to capture images that I never thought were possible. It certainly is a wonderful camera for night photography! The waterfall seen here is Partridge Falls on the Pigeon River in northeast Minnesota. This river is the border between the U.S. and Canada in this part of the state. My friend Roger was up for the weekend and when Roger visits we usually try to do a session of night photography. The concept portrayed in this image was actually Roger's idea. I was in between shooting images when all of a sudden Roger walked out in front of me and stood near the base of the falls, using his flashlight to paint light up, down, left and right across the falls. After I saw his image I knew I had to try one of my own. I have always wanted to try shooting Partridge Falls with the stars above it but with the cameras I used to have the results, while interesting to view at web size, would have been too noisy for printing. The Canon 5D Mark II changes that. I have already had a print of one of these images made, and it is stunning!



(Above: I used my Petzl Tikka headlamp to "paint" light onto the falls during the 30 second exposure.)

(Below: In this image, in addition to my Petzl headlamp, I was also holding my flashlight in my right hand. My intent was to try to look like I was holding a lightsaber, making me look like a Jedi from a Star Wars movie. The effect sort of worked, except my lightsaber is really long!)



After shooting at Partridge Falls, Roger and I then headed down to the Spirit Tree to do some more star shooting, this time with longer exposures to produce some star trail images. In this first image below, I was looking for a unique angle on the tree and was lucky to have both the North Star and the Milky Way in this image behind the tree. Overall, this night was one of the most fun times that I've ever had with a camera!