Eleven Eclipses: Following Our Friends in the Path of Totality

Here we are. After waiting for it to come for years, the week of the Great North American Eclipse is now over.

Four of the five of us at National Parks at Night enjoyed the few minutes of darkness. I was with my daughter Maggie on an eclipse-chasing road trip to eastern Kentucky. Lance was with his wife Katherine in their backyard in Vermont. Matt and Gabe were leading our workshop in Arkansas’ Hot Springs National Park.

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In the days that followed, we looked around social media and saw so many wonderful and creative images made during that 4 minutes of magic, set in so many inspiring places along the path of totality. And we noticed that many of those photographs were made by former attendees of our workshops and conferences. Really—the work we’ve seen has blown us away.

So we decided that instead of celebrating our own eclipse images, we want to celebrate theirs.

Below you’ve find eclipse photographs and eclipse stories from 11 of the amazing night photographers we’ve had the pleasure of working alongside over the past decade. We hope you enjoy their art.

Of course, these aren’t all the photographs created by our alums, nor by the uncountable number of night photographers around the globe. So many images are still showing up on social media, and we applaud them all.

If we missed you in the celebration below, please add your photo and your story to the comments section, or on our social media. We’d love to see what you did!

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Charles Barker

cbarkerphoto.com • Instagram

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Nikon Z 9 with a Nikon Z 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens at 400mm. Composite of exposures from 1/800, f/8, ISO 800 (phases) to 1/60, f/22, ISO 800 (totality).

I went to Cuyahoga National Park in Ohio. I approached this without full awareness of just how special this experience would be. I planned for this event, spent lots of time listening to others describe it, I’d seen pictures and thought I knew what I was about to see. Yet, as the moment of totality arrived, I was still astonished, startled and in awe. Staring at the dark sphere where the sun should be, I realized I’d taken the sun for granted my entire life. The collective gasp and applause of other park-goers nearby reminded me that we were all sharing this amazing moment, and it was one none of us would ever forget.

Ed Finn

Instagram

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Fujifilm X-T5 with a Fujifilm XF 8-16mm f/2.8 lens at 15 mm. Composite of 35 frames shot at 1/40, f/5.6, ISO 400.

I shot this in Lake Placid, New York. We drove there Friday through a snowstorm, and it snowed all day Saturday as well, with solid thick clouds. We scouted the area for the best shot on Sunday. The eclipse was high in the sky Monday, which made finding an interesting foreground a challenge. At the back of the hotel we were staying in I could frame the shot through some trees, with mountains behind. The area filled with people from the hotel and the neighborhood to see the eclipse, and we were pleased that the snow stopped and the clouds lightened by showtime for the eclipse tailgate parties.

Holly Looney

ourworldinphotos.com

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Canon R3 with a Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 lens at 400 mm. Composite images shot at 1/500, f/8, ISO 1600.

I shot this in Ouachita National Forest in Hot Springs, Arkansas, as part of National Parks at Night’s Hot Springs and the Total Eclipse workshop. I did this composite because I was struck by the number of onlookers who left the area following the end of totality. That was definitely not the end of the eclipse and this is a visual of that fact.

James Embrescia

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Sony a1 with a Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 lens.1/500, f/8, ISO 800, shot at intervals of 1 minute, 20 seconds intervals.

I just took the online black and white workshop with by Tim and Lance, so I wanted to try a black and white picture of the eclipse. I like photos that capture abstract patterns and the motion of natural things, so this was a natural for me. I picked an interval I thought would work based on something I read about speed of motion during an eclipse, and I was lucky.

Jurgen Lobert

Linktree

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Sun images: Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 at 600 mm. 1/180, f/8, ISO 100. Foreground: Nikon Z 6II with a Sony 14mm f/1.8 lens at 1/2, f/11, ISO 200.

After planning for Texas because of less chance for clouds, I cancelled my trip on short notice to escape the tornado warnings and rain forecast, and I ended up near Pittsburg, New Hampshire, on a perfectly clear day with a bunch of friends. I decided to stress myself out and operate three cameras, one for closeups, one for landscape and another for a 360-degree view with a circular fisheye to capture that awesome moment with darkness above and sunset all around.

Klaus-Peter Statz

Instagram

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Totality: Nikon D780 with Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 lens at 400mm. 1/160, f/8, ISO 400. Foreground: Sony RX100V at 24mm (built-in lens). 1/30, f/1.8, ISO 500.

After shooting the 2017 eclipse (also during a National Parks at Night workshop, in Idaho) and missing most of the spectacle as I was busy operating two cameras, I vowed that this time I would shoot only the corona and would spend the remaining time watching the eclipse with my own eyes. When totality happened I had my Nikon shoot bracketed close-up exposures, triggered with a remote release. Watching the eclipse I was so impressed by what I saw that I spontaneously snapped a few frames with my trusted Sony point-and-shoot, one of which serves as the foreground for this composite. The sun/moon at totality is one of the frames shot with the Nikon at 400mm. The two together are the perfect representation of what I saw and experienced.

Lawrence Lee

Instagram

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Pentax K-1 Mark II with a Pentax 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6 lens at 410mm. 1/2500, f/8, ISO 800.

This was my first total solar eclipse experience and it was truly amazing. Shot in Lake Placid, New York, at the Olympic Ski Jumping Complex. We had spent the weekend scouting locations and chose this spot for its easily identifiable ski jumping towers. I shot the eclipse with two cameras using the 150-450mm telephoto lens and a 15-30mm lens.

Patricia Blake

Instagram

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Sun images: Canon 5D Mark IV with a 200mm lens. 1/800, f/6.3, ISO 1600 during totality, plus bracketed exposures with a NiSi Solar Filter Pro Nano UV/IR Cut ND during the other phases. Foreground: Canon 60D with a 14mm fisheye lens. 1/6, f/8, ISO 1600.

The 2024 eclipse happened to go right over my hometown in New Castle, Indiana. I just knew that I wanted to get a shot of the eclipse phases over a historic Indiana barn. This beautiful barn was built in 1860 and happens to be owned by an astrophysicist who was thrilled to have a night sky nerd like me ask if I could sit in his empty cornfield during the eclipse. I made some wonderful new friends and truly enjoyed photographing. Getting muddy in a cornfield was absolutely worth it!

Shari Hunt

sharihuntphotography.com • Instagram

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Sony a7R III with a Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens. 1/250, f/6.3, ISO 100.

I was initially going to chase clear skies, but decided the day before the eclipse to stay in Dallas. With heavy low clouds most of the morning (even just an hour before totality), I thought it would be a total bust. However, I met fellow National Parks at Night alum Beth Kochur at our nearby lake and set up, with fingers crossed. Everything turned out perfect just in time and the eclipse was insane. Now I understand the addiction (kinda like night photography).

Sudhir Mehta

Instagram

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Sony a7R III with Sony 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens at 400mm. Composite of totality pictures shot at shutter speeds ranging from 1/200 to 2 seconds, f/11, ISO 200.

I shot the eclipse while on the National Parks at Night workshop to Hot Springs National Park. This was shot in Charlton, near Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Terry Kahler

tkahler.com • Instagram

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Sony a7 IV with a Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 lens. 1/160, f/6.3, ISO 800.

I shot in Austin, Texas. I wasn’t too excited about this event as photographing the solar eclipse is not part of my bucket list. As a result, I was not prepared. My camera gear sat on the shelf as it has for months. At about 1:13 p.m. local time, even though we had very cloudy skies and I had only minutes to prepare, I decided that I should get myself in gear and prepare to photograph the event just in case conditions improved. So I got up from my desk and retrieved my camera gear only to note that the batteries were depleted. However, I found one battery with a 47 percent charge. I inserted the battery in the camera, mounted my lens and headed out to photograph this astronomical event. Right place, right time.

Your Turn

Did you shoot the eclipse too? We’d love to see your images! Share in the comments below, or on our Facebook page, or on Instagram (tag us @nationalparksatnight #nationalparksatnight #seizethenight). Be sure to tell a story too—the technical aspects, the challenge overcome, or a tale of the experience.

Chris Nicholson is a partner and director of content with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015) and Photographing Lighthouses (Sidelight Books, 2024). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Night Grooves: Our Favorite Photos of 2023

It’s that time again. The year is winding down, wrapping up, and we look back on all of the things we did that we are proud of, and perhaps the things we didn’t do or places we didn’t go that are still on the bucket list. It’s a big world out there, with so many dark places to explore! Soon, as we turn the final calendar page, we’ll look ahead to the new year full of promise and opportunity, and of the many images waiting to be made.

Here at National Parks at Night, we have a tradition of looking back at a year’s worth of photos and picking our favorites to share. This also gives us a moment to reflect on how fortunate we are to be able to travel to such spectacular places with you, and to remember that the world is full of beauty and wonder.

We’ve had a banger for a year. We led 22 workshops and tours, explored nine U.S. national parks visited eight islands, led seven international photo expeditions, and planned a full schedule of both new and favorite destinations for 2024.

For now, as we wrap up and wind down the current year, we hope you’ll enjoy seeing our favorite images. And then we hope you’ll take a moment or two to find and share your own favorites from 2023 with us.

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Chris Nicholson

Voyageurs National Park

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Nikon D5 with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Four stacked exposures shot at 4 minutes, f/4, ISO 800.

A favorite photo is not necessarily a best photo. This is a fact I run into annually, when I have to choose and write about my favorite two night photos of the year.

Artistically and technically, I think this photo is good, but it wouldn’t end up in my portfolio. I didn’t have an amazing foreground to work with—just the shape of the tree line at the water’s edge, and the glass-surface reflection of pristine dark skies. I worked with what I had, most of which was technique.

But I once heard a photographer say, “A good photograph shouldn’t be of something, it should be about something.” With that in mind, I tell you that while this photo is of trees and water and stars, it’s about something else: It’s about time with my 10-year-old daughter.

This past summer Maggie and I ventured to Minnesota to explore Voyageurs National Park. I rented a houseboat called Northern Lite, and we spent five days cruising the lakes and four nights sleeping on the water. We saw eagles and loons, otters and fish, sunrises and sunsets—and yes, stars and darkness. On the first night, she walked off the boat and onto the sand, chatting as usual, when she looked up, paused mid-sentence and said, “Whoa! Is that the Milky Way?!” Her joy practically lit up the lake.

This photo is about all of those things. It’s also about our last evening of the trip. In late afternoon we secured the boat to the shore of Grassy Bay. We changed into our swimsuits and jumped off the stern to swim in the cool waters of the cove. We made a steak dinner, then built a fire on the beach for roasting marshmallows. We played a trivia game inside, and brought the flashlight outside to search the shallows for crayfish and frogs and leeches.

The next morning, as the sun rose and wicked the mist off the water, I captained us out of the park and back to the marina, smiling, feeling great, knowing I’d just finished one of the best weeks of my life—and hoping that Maggie will someday look back and feel the same.

So when I look at this photo now, what I see is the tree line that sheltered our boat, the very water we swam in, the stars that shined while we slept—and the peace of knowing that Maggie and I shared a wonderful slice of our lives together. And that’s my favorite.

Joshua Tree National Park

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Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Three focus-stacked, blended exposures shot at 5 minutes, f/5.6, ISO 6400 (foreground); 5 minutes, f/5.6, ISO 6400 (middleground); and 15 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400 (background).

I love Joshua Tree National Park. I love the trees, I love the rock formations. But after a week of shooting there this fall—and after shooting there for about the fifth time in 5 years—I was feeling done with yuccas and boulders. So on my last day of the trip I wandered off looking for something different. While scouting at the end of daylight, I found this desert wildflower (a datura, specifically) tucked in a narrow valley, blooming peacefully along the trail. I knew I needed to shoot it under the night sky.

I hung around the spot for a bit, thinking through what I wanted to do, then I ate my sandwich dinner while sitting on a stone next to the flower, waiting for conditions to be right.

To get the composition I desired, I needed to get the lens only about a foot from the bloom, which meant I wouldn’t have enough depth of field for sharp stars. I also knew that once twilight was over, the valley would be void of light, leaving nothing to illuminate the main subject.

To solve these problems, I combined two techniques: I shot for both a focus stack and a starlight blend. The raw materials involved three frames, with separate focus points and exposures for the foreground, the middleground and the background. Once home I ran them all through AI Denoise in Lightroom, then blended each in Photoshop to create the final image.

Gabriel Biderman

Tongariki Night Skies, Rapa Nui

Astro-modified Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. 8 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400. (Swipe to reveal the names of the celestial bodies in this image.)

Several dreams came true this year, with the most vivid being a visit to Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

I was once a young boy who loved mythology and ancient history, and that’s when I first saw the mysterious moai in a National Geographic magazine. I wanted to be an archaeologist and read as much as I could about moai, which unfortunately wasn’t much. But the seed was planted and the desire to one day stand among them never left me. When I found out we had access to the moai at night, under the southern stars, well, the trip couldn’t come quick enough!

We typically plan our Easter Island night photography tours for February, which gives us the clearest skies. However, at that time of year the core of the Milky Way isn’t visible until 1 or 2 hours before morning twilight. That’s not too much of an issue, as each night we get to see all the stars we never see in the Northern Hemisphere—and to be honest, I feel lost in the sky. It’s absolutely amazing. I feel like a young explorer, literally connecting the dots and seeing vivid nebulas and the Magellanic Clouds with my naked eye.

But remember, we still need a good foreground to balance the story. To me, nothing beats the moai for the epic foreground to connect to the constellations.

I shot this image at one of the most visited sites, Tongariki. We arrived at 4 a.m. and had about 2 hours to photograph the southern tail and core of the Milky Way, the Southern Cross, the Carina Nebula and more.

I’m so addicted to the southern skies and can’t wait to dip south of the equator again and again!

Highland Point Lighthouse, Cape Cod

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Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S lens at 22mm. 10 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Sometimes our best photos are ones closer to home. I was lucky enough to travel all over the world this year, but one of the workshops I was looking forward to most was Lighthouses of Cape Cod. It was a nostalgic trip for me, as I’d spent life on the Cape from age 4 through grade 4. Lighthouses were aplenty, and, like fried clams, they are the norm in the area.

Photographing lighthouses is tricky, and it requires different capture and processing techniques to master in order to truly capture the essence of one at night. One technique we were trying to incorporate was using tilt-shift lenses to get the correct perspective of these architectural delights. Shot incorrectly, many of these towers can look like the Leaning Lighthouse of Pisa. There are ways to “straighten your buildings” in post, but we instead focused on either shooting it correctly with a tilt-shift lens or shooting it as straight as we could with our regular lenses.

This photograph of Highland Point Lighthouse was my last shot of the night. I was using a Nikon 19mm tilt-shift for a long exposure on the other side of the lighthouse, so I went hunting for another angle with my 14-24mm, which is when I came across this idea.

While this shot might not have a dramatic wow factor, it stuck with me while assessing my best shots of 2023. Everything just aligns nicely. I treated my 14-24mm lens like a tilt shift and didn’t angle it up or down, which kept distortion to a minimum. I got closer and filled the frame with the fence and was very specific with where I cropped in on the house.

The beam of this lighthouse was created by including two flashes of the light during a 10-second exposure. To me, it looks like a perfect cover shot of a lighthouse at night that you would see in a magazine. I’m looking forward to photographing more lighthouses on the cape in 2024, when we run our Lighthouses of Martha’s Vineyard workshop!

Lance Keimig

Three Moai, Rano Rakaru, Rapa Nui

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Nikon D780 with a Sigma 24mm f/1.4 lens, lit with two Luxli Fiddle LED panels. 20 seconds , f/2.8, ISO 12,800.

I was fortunate to begin my year with two back-to-back tours on Rapa Nui, or Easter Island––one with Gabe and one with Matt. It’s such a special place, and having nighttime access to the moai statues is a real privilege. Having multiple nights to experience and photograph the quarry where the statues were carved was a dream come true. It’s the best location on the island for photography because of the sheer number of moai and the variation in the terrain.

The challenging aspect of photographing at Ranorakaru is that visitors are confined to a series of narrow trails due to the fragile nature of this archeological site. This makes for limited composition and lighting opportunities.

In this particular scene, there was a very limited angle that allowed me to align the three moai in such a way that they did not overlap each other and still be able to illuminate them effectively. To light the two figures in the foreground, I placed a Luxli Fiddle with a grid attachment on a stand downhill and camera left. I placed a second Fiddle further along the trail to light the third moai, also with a grid and tilted up to avoid spilling the light on the ground in front of the statue. The crescent moon was rising in the background and outside of the left part of the frame, and it provided wonderful illumination for the clouds that would have otherwise deadened the sky.

I also confess to using Generative Fill in Photoshop to remove the low railings along the path in the lower left portion of the frame. They were in shadow, but I still found them a distracting modern anachronism that took away from the feeling I wanted to create with the image. AI Denoise enabled me to use ISO 12,800 with relative impunity in this very dark environment with virtually no light pollution. I’m a nervous skeptic when it comes to most things AI (Beware the Cylons), but it has been a tremendous boon for photographers this year.

The Pleiades from Hurricane Ridge on a Smoky Night, Olympic National Park

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Nikon D780 with a Sigma 24mm f/1.4 lens. 13 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

During our September workshop in Olympic National Park, we visited Hurricane Ridge twice. The wildfire smoke was so thick on the first night that we went back down to sea level before the sky was even dark. On the second night the winds shifted, and the air was mostly clear on the ridge, but as we climbed the trail to the top of Hurricane Hill, the wind shifted once more and smoke filled the valleys to the north and west.

I’d been looking forward to returning to Olympic since Chris and I did a backpacking workshop to Shi Shi Beach in 2018. I was mostly excited about photographing the sea stacks on the beaches, so it’s ironic that my favorite image from the trip is from the mountains high above the Pacific.

The execution of the image was straightforward. There was no moon, but the last lingering twilight and we did have some light pollution from the towns of Sequim and Port Townsend to the northeast. I kept the shutter speed to 13 seconds to avoid stars trailing with the 24mm lens. I stopped down to f/2.8 but I wish I had stopped down a bit more and gone with a higher ISO.

The combination of the smoke and the light in the sky made for some great soft colors, and the magnificent star cluster known as the Pleiades was perfectly positioned to juxtapose against the fir trees in the foreground. Tennyson referred to the Pleiades as a “swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid” and that description was never more apt than on that smoky night in the Olympics. Sometimes the simplest of images can be the most rewarding.

Matt Hill

Meteors Over High Dune, Great Sand Dunes National Park

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Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 24mm. Two frames shot at 5 minutes, f/2.8, ISO 800, stitched in PTGUI Pro (foreground), blended with 32 frames shot at 10 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400, stacked and masked in Photoshop (meteors).

In August 2023 I ascended to High Dune within Great Sand Dunes National Park. This was my fifth visit to the park and my holy grail was to make a meteor shower composite over the sand dune field.

Due to adverse weather conditions during the meteor shower peak, we could not climb the dunes as a group, and that made me sad. But keep in mind it’s an 800-foot uphill slog on sand, which begins at 8,000 feet of elevation. Some were relieved.

After the workshop ended, I gave it a shot solo. The weather was promising, and I packed as lightly as possible. I brought my Novoflex Triobalance and a Novoflex BasicPod hiking kit, plus 1.5 gallons of water, my panorama rig, and two cameras and two lenses.

For this image I made a two-panel vertorama—one panel predominantly of the dunes and the other of the sky, both during twilight. The lights from below are campers having a small but very fun party.

Much to my chagrin, the quantity of meteors that evening was not nearly as great as the night of the peak. So I took Tim’s advice and composited in the sky and meteors from the night of the peak. All these images were photographed in the same direction using the same technique and lens.

I do wish I could have shot it all on the same night, but you can choose to make the best of variables out of your control. This became the composite I’ve been dreaming of making.

Ranu Kau Caldera, Rapa Nui

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Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 at 24mm. 17 frames shot at 10 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 12,800, stitched in two rows using PTGUI Pro.

When I began earnestly making panoramas, it was because the complexity of the method thrilled me. Nowadays I use the methods as means to achieve visual goals, and especially for natural perspective control for wider fields of view.

I don’t mind if someone notices it’s a panorama, but I don’t want them to be distracted by the method. With this in mind, here is a 17-image panorama composite that covers about 220 degrees of width and about 100 degrees of height. I use a 24mm lens when I want a natural rendition and have the time to make a multi-row pano sweep, which in this case was an ironic miscalculation my part because I ended up having only one chance at this because of the weather.

The location is Rano Kau caldera on the island of Rapa Nui. We got up at 3 a.m. to attempt this Milky Way bend over the crater—and got rained out. The second attempt was our last chance. We got lucky in between rainstorms and grabbed this moody moment of power and grace. I had to work fast. And I got this one mosaic captured before we got wet again.

I enjoy this image so much that I see it every day as a metal print from Bay Photo Lab.

Tim Cooper

Aurora, Flakstadoya, Norway

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Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens at 15mm. 2 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

The Lofoten archipelago is one my favorite landscapes in the world. I am completely enamored with this unique island chain located in northern Norway. The jagged and picture-perfect peaks here rise thousands of feet nearly straight up from the bays and inlets, and this rugged and striking landscape has produced more than its fair share of its iconic images. Especially in winter.

As I look back on the images I made in 2023, this one stands out as a favorite. Chasing the aurora borealis is always fun, and even a mediocre display of light is still exciting. This night Matt and I were scouting the island of Flakstadoya, and the evening’s display was phenomenal. In typical fashion, Matt and I stood nearly next to each another while capturing very different takes of the sky and landscape.

Like scent and sound, pictures can produce very strong memory recall. Every time I see this image I am transported back to that magical night. But that is not the only reason it’s one of my favorites.

This image also fulfills one of the goals I strive for in all my landscape photographs: capturing a sense of place. While it’s an easy concept to discuss, and to understand, I’ve found that I fail more often than I would like in trying to convey my impression of a place. I feel this image is one of my few that truly captures the essence of Lofoten. Or at least the way that I romantically see and remember this stunning island chain.

Burishoole Abbey, County Mayo, Ireland

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Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, lit with a Coast HP7R flashlight. Seven 4 minute exposures for star trails and four 4 minute exposures for light painting. All exposures at f/4, ISO 100.

Light painting has always been my favorite part of night photography. Creating a scene that has never existed before is thrilling. It’s starting with a nearly blank canvas. It’s a challenge. A real challenge.

Here at Burishoole Abbey in Ireland, I was determined. Lance and I had visited and photographed the abbey before and he created a fantastic image of this section that I had always admired. On this visit I was eager to interpret the same scene in my own way.

My goal was to have the tombstones seemingly glow from within while highlighting the texture of the abbey’s stone work and the wrought iron fence in the foreground. Many different angles of light would be required to achieve this look. It would take a bunch of experimenting. It would be—again, challenging.

In the end it took over 15 attempts just to determine the basic light angles and duration of flashlight illumination for those separate angles. Once I felt confident, I needed another four separate exposures lasting a minute each to paint all of the aspects of the scene I wanted to highlight.

Due to the time needed to inspect and analyze the light painting between exposures, the star trails from my light painting frames wouldn’t stack properly. So, leaving my tripod in place, I shot another seven frames at the same exposure of 4 minutes, f/4 to create the star trail frames for the final stack.

All in all, the entire scene took around 1.5 to 2 hours of time. That was 2 hours of a blissful “no-mind” state that night photography can often produce. I love light painting.

Your Turn

What was your favorite night photograph of 2023? We’d love to see it! Share in the comments below, or on our Facebook page, or on Instagram (tag us @nationalparksatnight #nationalparksatnight #seizethenight). Be sure to tell a story too—the technical aspects, the challenge overcome, or a tale of the experience.

Then … enjoy winding down 2023 and winding up 2024. There’s lot of night-seizing to be had!

Lance Keimig is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He has been photographing at night for 30 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images and workshops at www.thenightskye.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Spring Solar Storm Brings a Week of Amazing Auroras

Science makes much predictable, but sometimes the universe still surprises us. It did so again this week, as the strongest solar storm in over half a decade slammed into our planet, creating amazing displays of auroras that extended halfway down the Northern Hemisphere.

The phenomenon started early in the week, when a coronal hole 20 times wider than Earth appeared on the face of the sun. The resulting solar winds were directed right at us, and soon aurora forecasts were sending the Kp index through the atmosphere.

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Even before that, reports of Northern Lights were reverberating throughout the night photography world. Over the past 10 days we’ve seen posts on Instagram and Facebook, and received photos and questions from our friends and workshop alums.

Better still, we happened to be running two international night photography tours at the time, both in places perfect for viewing auroras: Iceland’s south coast and Norway’s Lofoten Islands. Both locations provided front-row seats to the most inspiring northern lights show we’ve seen in years.

Below are some of the images we’ve made over the past week and a half.

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Vatnajokull National Park, Iceland. © 2023 Lance Keimig. Nikon D780 with a Tamron VR 15-30mm f/2.8 G lens. 6 frames shot at 13 seconds, f/4.5, ISO 5000, stitched in Adobe Lightroom.

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Flakstadpollen, Norway. © 2023 Tim Cooper. Nikon Z6 II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 4 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

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Iceberg in Vatnajokull National Park, Iceland. © 2023 Lance Keimig. Nikon D780 with a Tamron VR 15-30mm f/2.8 G lens, light painted with a Luxli Fiddle. Exposure 20 seconds, f/3.2, ISO 1600.

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Nappskaret, Norway. © 2023 Tim Cooper. Nikon Z6 II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 2 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

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Nappskaret, Norway. © 2023 Matt Hill. Nikon Z6 II with a Laowa 15mm f/2 lens. ISO 3200, f/2.8 and 2 seconds.

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Lofoten Islands, Norway. © 2023 Matt Hill. Nikon Z6 II with a Laowa 12mm f/2.8 lens. 6 frames shot at 3 seconds, f/4, ISO 6400, stitched in PTGui.

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Vatnajokull National Park, Iceland. © 2023 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 10 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 6400.

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Aurora over Iceland. © 2023 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 2.5 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 3200.

More Information

Want to learn more about this solar storm? Check out:

• Live Science: “Enormous 'Hole' in the Sun's Atmosphere will Trigger Stunning Auroras Friday”

• IFLScience: “Massive Hole in Sun's Atmosphere Cracked Open and Auroras are Coming”

• Space.com: “Strongest Solar Storm in Nearly 6 Years Slams into Earth Catching Forecasters by Surprise”

Want to learn more about photographing auroras? Check out our blog posts:

• “Capturing Clouds of Light: How to Photograph the Aurora Borealis”

• “Northern Exposure: 8 Illuminating tips for Photographing Auroras”

• “Five Questions: Aurora Noise, Portable Stools, Moving Lightroom and More”

• “Five Questions: Light Painting Headlights, Moonrises and Sunsets, Auroras and More”

Your Turn

Have you been out photographing the auroras this week? We’d love to see your images! Share in the comments below, or on our Facebook page, or on Instagram (tag us @nationalparksatnight #nationalparksatnight #seizethenight).

And by the way, the show isn’t over. Auroras are continuing to dazzle dark-roaming photographers. So get out there and seize the night!

Chris Nicholson is a partner and director of content with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015) and Photographing Lighthouses (Sidelight Books, 2023). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Hanging Ten: Our Favorite Photos of 2022

As time seems to accelerate with each passing year, we can look back at 2022 as when the world got its collective groove back. If 2020 is best remembered as the year we’d rather forget as the full force of Covid shut down the globe, and 2021 was a year of starts and stops as one variant after another reared its ugly head, then 2022 is the year we hit full stride and really got back up to speed.

Here at National Parks at Night, we ran a full schedule of workshops and tours, including a couple that had been twice rescheduled due to the pandemic. We ran 23 workshops and tours, six of which were international trips, including our first aboard a sailboat and our first to the Faroe Islands. We also welcomed some wonderful new people into the National Parks at Night community with our first Intro to Night Photography workshop in Death Valley.

It was a productive year for image-making too. Tim dug deeper into blue hour blends. Matt focused on rendering astro-landscapes through panoramas, vertoramas and little planets. Chris leaned into natural-looking foregrounds for night photos, whether blue hour blends, moonlit foregrounds, long exposures to fill in shadows, or employing Low-level Landscape Lighting (LLL) with a dim and cool light. Gabe leveled up his post-processing skills, getting more comfortable with blending, masking, stacking and compositing. I used new LLL tools to repurpose lighting skills I had developed a couple of decades ago.

It’s always a challenge to pick our favorite images of the year, but it’s also a great opportunity to look back at the images we made, to revisit the places we went, and especially to remember the people we traveled and worked with while making those images.

Below you see each of our top two picks from the night photographs we made in 2022.

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Chris Nicholson

Moon Over Mount Baker

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Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 10 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 800.

The Mount Baker Wilderness is one of my favorite places in the world. It’s part of Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, in a stretch of Washington state’s North Cascades mountains, bordering the wilds of North Cascades National Park. Walking the trails is like walking at the edge of heaven.

Gabe and I brought a group to the area this summer. We stayed in a chalet in the mountains for a couple of nights, where we had access to some of the most beautiful alpine scenery in the U.S. On the second night we took a short hike, and I looked for an interesting way to photograph an area I’d shot twice before. The moon over Mount Baker was calling to me—the balance of moonlight between the sky and landscape was perfect—but I was struggling to find an intriguing foreground.

I walked a little further up the trail, turned a bend around some large glacial erratics, and came upon this expanse of ice and snow. Perfect! I had to climb one of those erratics to get the angle right. The boulder didn’t have enough room for both me and my tripod, so setting up was a little precarious—but worth the trouble.

I spent a lot of time this year working on natural-looking foregrounds to night photos, and using moonlight is one of the techniques I most enjoy. The serenity and dynamics that combine in this scene are a perfect example of why.

Star Trails Over Ocean Cliffs, Acadia National Park

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Nikon D5 with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. 20 minutes, f/6.3, ISO 200.

From one corner of the mainland to the other, I moved from North Cascades in summer to Acadia in fall. On our last night in the latter, I brought Matt and a couple of our friends to one of my favorites spots in the park—one of my favorites for either photography or hiking or even just for enjoying the sound of waves swishing onto the cliff-bottom shores.

I made this photo while waiting to make another. I’d scouted a composition that required facing west, which is the last direction of sky to get dark at night. I wanted to stay productive while waiting, so I wandered around the rocks and eventually found this eastward view toward the entrance to Frenchman Bay.

Long exposures aren’t always easy to visualize, and that was the case with this setup. I wasn’t sure I’d like the image. But I had time, so I dilated it into this exposure. And when it was done, I was very glad I’d opened the shutter.

The scene was bathed in moonlight, so I didn’t need to do any blending or light painting to get detail in the foreground. There was so much moonlight, in fact, that the stars were getting a bit washed out—so I mounted a polarizing filter to make the moonlit sky pop a little better.

Once all that was done, executing the photograph was a matter of a simple 20-minute exposure and some easy tweaks in post.

Gabriel Biderman

Liberty Bell, Milky Way and Car Trail

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Nikon Z 6 with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Foreground: 2 minutes, f/4, ISO 1600; sky: 8 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 12,800.

I was incredibly fortunate in 2022 to travel 70,000 miles, to 4 countries, to 15-plus national parks, adding almost 50,000 clicks to my cameras. Needless to say, I explored and taught a lot under the stars.

One of the most epic trips was my 3 weeks in the Pacific Northwest where I visited all three of the national parks in Washington, none of which I had previously been to. I was excited most about the least visited one, North Cascades National Park.

Known as “the American Alps,” North Cascades is challenging to explore, but once you peel back the layers it just gets better and better. The craggy mountains reminded me of the ancient peaks of Lofoten. And of those, Liberty Bell, to me, won the prize as the most distinguished of the peaks. It doesn’t hurt that—in this photo, anyway—the Milky Way rises above it and car trails act as a mirror below the peak.

We brought our workshop here and figured we’d stay for an hour or 2, but we all fell so in love with this location that we ended up staying the whole night.

There aren’t many times that I choose one spot to set up and happily stay all evening. But we had so much fun. We were all careful to compose with the Milky Way and add the road below. Some of us composed horizontally and some vertically. Most of us were shooting noise stacks because after we took our twilight base shot it got really dark and we were pushed to ISOs of 12,800 and beyond.

We’d shout out whenever a car was coming up the valley, and you’d hear the triggers firing, as well as our giggling that we’d captured another successful image of several awesome elements coming together.

We could feel the world rotating and the Milky Way moving closer and closer to the peak. Should we stay to see how it looks coming out of the top? Will it look like a volcano erupting with space dust?

The answer is yes, but that is a picture for another time. This one was similar to many that our group shot, and I don’t care. It genuinely brings me back to Liberty Bell and the excitement we all shared when all the stars, cars and mountains aligned.

Auroras Over Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

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Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. 8 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 12,800.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is one of my favorite places in the park system. The sand dunes, picturesque farmsteads, historic buildings and pristine dark skies keep me coming back for more. The people who live in the small towns that dot this Lake Michigan region are so warm and welcoming that I feel right at home.

I created this image during a workshop I teach for the Glen Arbor Arts Center. We experienced auroras on two nights! Sleeping Bear is at the 45th parallel, the halfway mark between the equator and the North Pole. That’s pretty far north for Michigan’s Lower Peninsula and the area is definitely prone to green, red and purple auroras.

This night was magical. We were chasing spiking and Steve auroras, and we settled on composing the light show and stars in reflecting pools of water. We were having a blast, but the composition was missing … well, the human element, to express how excited both the atoms and we were. So I set up the intervalometer and walked to the other side of the pool, careful to place myself close to the water so the reflection would be from head to toe.

Lance Keimig

Thurmond Train Station, New River Gorge National Park

Nikon D780 with an Irix 30mm f/1.4 lens. Two blended exposures of 15 seconds and 2 minutes, f/3.5, ISO 800.

I had long been aware of the semi-ghost town of Thurmond, West Virginia, as it reminds me of the sort of location used by O. Winston Link, train night photographer extraordinaire and one of my heroes. I had expected it to be a highlight of my visit to New River Gorge National Park, and the little town did not disappoint.

On the afternoon of the night I visited, there had been a tremendous thunderstorm, and all but emergency power was out in the area. Luckily for me, this also caused the few trains that passed through the town that evening to stop at Thurmond station and wait for traffic down the line to clear. Their headlights provided ample illumination and just the right atmosphere when combined with the heavy wet summer air lingering in the gorge after the storm.

I didn’t think that the train would stay put long enough for me to make some good exposures, but after a minute or two staring at the scene and feeling as if I’d been transported back in time, I hustled down the track to a point halfway between the resting engine and the red signal lights that were holding the train in place.

I set up low to the ground and quickly determined that multiple exposures would be required to hold detail in both the highlights and shadows. I made a number of exposures, leaving myself options to either manually blend a couple of layers or to make an HDR composite if that turned out to be the better option. It did. I was excited that a car approached from across the river, lighting part of the bridge and filling in some shadows in an otherwise dark part of the frame.

I spent the whole night enraptured by the little town, thinking of Link, and feeling so pleased to finally get to create images in his footsteps.

Eidi, Faroe Islands

Nikon D780 with a Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 lens at 15mm. 3 minutes, f/4.5, ISO 800.

During our pre-workshop scouting in the Faroe Islands, Tim and I took a slight diversion to the outskirts of the little town of Eidi to check out a soccer pitch near the coast that we had seen as we came down the mountain above the town. I was much more interested in the town, but Tim saw the potential of this coastal view.

We didn’t shoot that day, but we did come back with the workshop one night after a wonderful Ethiopian meal prepared especially for our group at Rose’s Cafe a few miles away.

We didn’t get to do as much night photography as we had hoped, in part due to the weather, and in part due to sheer exhaustion from the long, full days we were experiencing. It was in fact raining off and on this night, but the group toughed it out and we photographed at the water’s edge for about an hour and a half. At one point the clouds opened up with the moon rising behind them, and that combined with waves crashing on the rocky shoreline and a long exposure made for one of my favorite images from our 18 days in Faroe, and of the whole year.

The Faroe Islands were a new destination both for me and for National Parks at Night in 2022, and in a year full of outstanding adventures with outstanding colleagues, it stands out as my favorite recent trip and the place I’m most excited to get back to.

Matt Hill

Half Dome Forest Fire Tracked Vertorama

Astro-modified Nikon Z 6 with a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and FTZ Adapter; foreground tracked with a Benro Polaris. 30 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 12,800.

When Lance and I were in the Eastern Sierra for a workshop this year, there were scattered forest fires that occasionally blew smoke in a direction that affected us. At Olmsted Point there is a spectacular view of Half Dome, and the Milky Way core was going to line up vertically over it. What an opportunity!

Alas, upwind of the iconic peak was a forest fire and the smoke was drifting right into the view. Some people might pout, stomp their feet, shake their fists at the heavens and shout, “I want clear skies!”

Not me. I saw that smoke and said, “Wow, now this isn’t something I’ve ever seen before! It’s something real that is happening now and tells a story of the drought and fire cycles. How can I make this work for an image?”

It was after twilight, but the fire and starlight provided enough illumination for exposures at ISO 12,800. And I wanted Half Dome, which is quite diminutive from that vantage, to really stand out. So I put on a 70mm lens and composed for a vertorama where the landscape and sky were exposed at the same settings to blend well.

I shot with my astro-modified Nikon Z 6 to pull out more of the reds and magentas. I exposed the sky first to see how well the stars poked through the low smoke layer. Using the Benro Polaris to track that image for 30 seconds was a breeze.

Liking the results, I recomposed the landscape frame to include the granite valley walls leading up to Half Dome, and then completed the two-panel vertorama.

Animus Forks Little Planet

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Nikon Z 6II with a Laowa 12mm f/2.8 lens. Foreground: 18 blended frames shot at 1/4, 1 and 4 seconds, f/11, ISO 800; sky: 10 stacked images shot at 15 seconds, f/4, ISO 12,800.

When we arrived at the abandoned mine town in Colorado at 11,000-plus feet, I was awestruck. I wanted to try to get everything I saw and felt into one photo. Reasonable, right? Of course. A spherical panorama would solve that! And PhotoPills showed me that the Milky Way arch from mountain peak to mountain peak would make for a strong “Little Planet” edit.

So I set up a tripod along the river’s edge and embarked on the most ambitious panorama I’ve ever attempted. (Watch your inbox for a blog post dedicated to the process from tip to tail.) The short story is that I made an HDR multi-row panorama of the landscape, left my setup in place and walked away for a few hours. I came back when the Milky Way hit the right position, then made sets of pano images of the sky to noise-stack in post.

I stitched the landscape and sky images separately in PTGUI Pro, then blended them in Photoshop. I did this process twice to find just the right shape for the little planet projections.

It was a risky idea, but I am super proud of how it turned out. And it’s inspired me to attempt even more blue hour spherical panorama blends in the future.

Tim Cooper

Northern Lights Near Fredvang, Lofoten Islands, Norway

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Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, lit with a Luxli Fiddle panel light and a Coast HP7R flashlight. 5 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 3200.

Sought after by photographers and night sky enthusiasts, the northern lights are a bucket list item for many folks. On our March trip to Norway, I was lucky enough to witness these amazing lights over one of the world’s great landscapes: the Lofoten Islands. While there are many places to view the aurora borealis in the Northern Hemisphere, not all supply the dynamic mix of mountains and beaches that Lofoten provides.

Three days after the group arrived we were treated to our first aurora opportunity. Keeping an eye on several aurora tracking apps, we headed out with high hopes. As we were photographing at a local beach, they finally appeared. The mix of waves, mountains and clouds with auroras was beautiful, but it soon petered out. We decided to try another location in the hopes they would reappear.

I’ll never forget the excitement in the van as we recounted the beauty we had just witnessed along with the fun of chasing some more. Once we arrived at our new location, we quickly scrambled out of the van and got to work.

I remember snapping a couple of quick frames before I headed along a trail that led to an inlet. Turning around I saw the trail leading directly back to the glow of green. Beautiful!

To be sure I captured something, I snapped a few quick shots. Then I set up a Luxli Fiddle to illuminate the foreground. This panel light coupled with a handheld Coast HP7R flashlight brought out the texture of the grasses and helped define the trail. I was in heaven.

It felt like I shot a thousand images while watching the auroras dance and change shapes. Everyone had plenty of time to capture the magic. The northern lights are truly phenomenal and experiencing them with like-minded folks was a true gift.

Star and Car Trails Near Checkerboard Mesa

Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 30 stacked frames shot at 30 seconds, f/4.0, ISO 800.

I love lines in my photographs. Both real and implied lines generate impressions that influence the feel of the photo. Converging lines suggest speed, vertical lines suggest stability and horizontal lines give a feeling of calm. My favorite lines, however, are curved ones. These lines are elegant. They are in no rush to get you through the composition, and they make you slow down and take in more detail.

Car trails and star trails are two very common types of lines we encounter in night photography. The National Parks at Night team will tell you that my love of car trails borders on an obsession. It was no surprise to Chris, then, when I found this scene while we were scouting locations for a spring workshop in Zion National Park.

Climbing up from the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway near Checkerboard Mesa, we were searching for dramatic red rock formations to use as foregrounds. The eastern side of the park is noted for its swirling sandstone and solitary trees, so these subjects were in my mind’s eye as we climbed the ridge.

Not finding my imagined scene, I switched from looking for a particular subject to seeing what the area offered. That type of “searching for a specific thing” has often made me miss great opportunities, so I am glad I was able to switch mental gears that night.

After walking around with an open mind I saw the road bisecting the peaks and leading straight to the sky. I was thrilled. In typical (for me) fashion, I made plenty of images to capture the best car trails and many more to capture the night sky. To round it off, I had to make several frames using different focus points to ensure that the foreground was sharp front-to-back at my wide-open aperture setting.

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Your Turn

What was your favorite night photograph of 2022? We’d love to see it! Share in the comments below, or on our Facebook page, or on Instagram (tag us @nationalparksatnight #nationalparksatnight #seizethenight). Be sure to tell a story too—the technical aspects, the challenge overcome, or a tale of the experience.

Then … have a Happy New Year!

Lance Keimig is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He has been photographing at night for 35 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images at www.thenightskye.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

10 Pictures, 10 Tales: Our Favorite Night Photos of 2021

2021 was a challenging year for all. But the overall themes that prevailed were hope and celebration, as many of us could finally rejoin the great outdoors with friends and family. At National Parks at Night, we were so thrilled to see our community in-person and to share sacred spaces under the stars.

Now, at the end of 2021, as in the past we look back on our year’s worth of images and note the ones that are most precious to us. Choosing your favorite photos can be a daunting project. What makes a 5-star image? Is it the technical work that went into creating it? Or the reminder of a very special night? Which photographs still continue to shine and what new gems have been uncovered?

As you read about each National Parks at Night instructor’s favorite two photographs of the year, the underlining theme is that each had the power to transport us back to that precise moment in time. The feelings that come rushing back can be a combination of everything that aligned to create the image. It transports us back and hopefully takes you on a similar journey.

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Chris Nicholson

Stars Over Zumwalt Meadows, Kings Canyon National Park

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Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Two blended exposures shot at 30 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 400 (foreground) and 20 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 8000 (sky).

When I was writing my book Photographing National Parks a few years back, I spent a lot of time in coffee shops in Queens, New York, where I lived at the time—as well as in coffee shops in my hometown in Connecticut and in other places I traveled—researching and writing about various places, including some I’d never been to. I recall writing about fantastical-sounding spots such as Cinder Cone in Lassen Volcanic National Park, and Grand View Point in Canyonlands, and Artist Point in North Cascades, and hoping that someday I’d get to visit them.

In the following years I was fortunate that my book carried me to these places and more. On multiple occasions I’ve stood gazing at grand vistas, thinking back to my days leaning over my laptop in some random Starbucks learning and writing about these places, and marveling at the journey that brought me to be there in person.

Another such place was Zumwalt Meadow in Kings Canyon National Park, which I wrote about sometime around 2013 and finally was able to visit in 2021. From my book: “Zumwalt Meadow is easy to hike to and around, and is pleasant to photograph, as well. The meadow sits on the valley floor, with lush greenery providing a softer aesthetic than found in most other areas of the park. The Kings River flows through the grasses, framed by the distinctive granite walls of Grand Sentinel and North Dome.”

Zumwalt sits near the end of the furthest mile of paved road in Kings Canyon. Lance and I ventured out there, scrambled about 30 feet up some talus, set up our tripods for a dusk foreground exposure, then waited under a peaceful, spectacular night sky for a starry background exposure.

For a long time I sat on a boulder, just watching this beautiful space on Earth roll into darkness, once again remembering where I’d been and feeling grateful for where I’d come.

Tuolumne River and Meadows, Yosemite National Park

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Nikon D5 with an Irix 11mm f/4 lens. Two blended exposures shot at 4 minutes, f/4, ISO 2000 (foreground) and 25 seconds, f/4, ISO 8000 (sky).

My next favorite photo from 2021 is also a blue hour blend, which isn’t much of a coincidence because it’s a technique I deliberately tried to employ more during the year.

This time I was in Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. It’s a beautiful location in the High Sierra region of the park—an area that for many visitors is practically ignored in favor of the oft-visited valley.

At 8,600 feet, Tuolumne is one of the highest-elevation meadows in the Sierra Nevada. The Tuolumne River quietly bisects the glacier-carved meadow, meandering among erratics and past scattered lodgepole and Jeffrey pines, supporting a teeming riparian ecosystem that’s practically an oasis in the beautiful yet rugged and vast sub-alpine landscape.

I was again with Lance, and we hiked into the meadow to a beautiful view of the Tuolumne River flowing toward the distant mountains. The moon was new, so I knew the landscape would be completely dark once twilight was over. Phrased another way, it was a perfect situation for a blue hour blend.

I set up my tripod and used the ultrawide Irix 11mm f/4 lens to fill the foreground with the river. I made a few exposures during dusk, then left the setup while heading off to shoot with a second camera for awhile. I came back once the stars were shining, and made several exposures over the course of an hour or so, capturing the Milky Way in different spots as it drifted along the horizon. I later composited two of the frames in Photoshop to create the final image.

Gabriel Biderman

Officer’s Row, Sandy Hook

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Nikon Z 6 with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/4 lens at 24mm. 30 seconds, f/11, ISO 1600.

My new year’s resolution for 2021 was a simple one: to get out more at night and photograph! I live in Brooklyn, New York, and spent most of 2020 indoors; I didn’t travel farther than my Vepsa could take me.

So in early January my wife and I decided to spend a weekend with a good friend of ours in New Jersey, right outside Sandy Hook. Part of Gateway National Recreation Area, Sandy Hook is a very popular spot in the warmer months, but in the winter when the temperature is below 20 F, not so much.

For the two nights I poked around with my camera, I was bundled up like an Arctic explorer. Everyone thought I was crazy for going out, but I would not be daunted. This was the first national park I had stepped into in over a year, and I was energized!

Officer’s Row is one of the most scenic spots at Sandy Hook, especially for the brilliant sunsets that light up the sky. I tried a variety of focal lengths, cropping in tight to one, three or five houses. It was nice, but almost too simple. I continued to move back to include more buildings and then I realized that the trees at the other end of the field stood in a row similar to the homes. By adding the trees, it created the perfect foreground to give a better sense of place. Officer’s Row is not just the homes they lived in, but the field where military folk played with their families.

It was a cold and lonely experience, but one that jump-started my 2021 relationship with national parks at night.

Reacquainted with the Night, Joshua Tree National Park

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Sony a7S III with a Sony FE 12-24mm f/2.8 lens at 18mm. 13 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

I was thrilled to have my first road trip of the year be to a familiar and always inspirational place, Joshua Tree National Park. I was also excited to be sharing the experience with my good friend and co-teacher, Matt Hill. We both packed our kitchen sinks for what would end up being a 3-week road trip. Not only did I bring trackers, tripods and time-lapse devices, but I also borrowed every Sony A7 and A9 camera and most of their wide and fast glass.

Matt and I had 3 days to scout and enjoy the night skies as we prepared for an upcoming workshop. But with so much gear, I got stuck in “testing” mode and created very few images for myself.

After the workshop we stayed an extra night to team with Chris and Tim to record our OPTIC Imaging Conference presentation for B&H Photo. That was a long, focused night that required the four of us to play multiple roles from creative to producer and grip!

During a break in the filming Matt went to lay on one of Joshua Tree’s many boulders. He was exhausted and needed to re-energize by taking a few moments to be one with the stars.

I immediately took one of our Luxli Fiddle LED panels and boomed it up and over him. I love the spotlight effect that made it seem like Matt was bathing in the moonlight. For the camera, I chose a low angle to create a new horizon line that makes it seem like Matt is floating on a wave of rocks.

This could be one of my favorite night portraits I have ever made, because to me Matt is experiencing something I have done and that we all need to remember: Take a break under the stars and get reacquainted with the night.

Lance Keimig

Julie at Bass Harbor

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Nikon D780 with a Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 lens at 29mm. Six composited frames exposed at a range of 2 to 30 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 100.

This image was made more or less as a grab shot as the last twilight was fading at Bass Harbor, Maine, during our PhotoPills workshop in Acadia National Park.

We had arrived just as the light was fading, and by the time the group dispersed and got to work, it was too late to get it all in one exposure. Not to be deterred, I did a six-frame bracket at 1-stop intervals. I was struck by the scene, and even in the fading twilight the light was gorgeous. Our workshop participant Julie had set up on the pier, and at first I was bummed that she was in my frame, but in the end I think that she adds to the image.

I’m attracted to the cool blue colors punctuated with one sodium vapor streetlight and a few warm lights in the houses, plus the stillness and the simple architectural shape of the shack on the pier. Julie adds another element, and marks the context for my memory.

To me, it’s a great example of how a photograph has the power to transport me to a different place and time. As I sit here typing on a cold December evening in Vermont, I’m taken back to coastal Maine in the height of summer, and all of the places spent over the course of a week with a fine group of people making images. It’s personal, and I like that. The viewer will make whatever they want or nothing at all of the image, but for me it is a place-keeper for a boatload of memories.

Tanguy Key

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Nikon D750 with a Nikon 28mm PC f/3.5 lens. 15 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 6400.

After completing our Everglades National Park workshop in April, Chris and I took a couple of days to explore the Florida Keys. I am so out of my element in Florida. Culturally, geographically, meteorologically, Florida is just not in my wheelhouse. I admit, after a long New England winter it was nice to be wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt while those at home were still wearing down jackets, but still …

The drive from the Everglades into the Middle Keys took longer than we had anticipated, and longer than Google had promised, and the night-photo opps visible from the main drag were few and far between. I didn’t mind; I was just along for the ride and happy to experience this strange new environment.

This image was made at the foot of one of the causeways that connects the keys, where the setting comprised a vast expanse of sea and sky punctuated with sticks and stones and various synthetic detritus. The tropical colors and minimalist landscape reminded me of the French surrealist painter Yves Tanguy, and I made several compositions that night in his honor that had a similar feel.

I’m smitten with this composition—the repeating shapes of the stones, the sticks, the horizon and the wires, and the graduated turquoise hues of water fading into sky all work together to make this one of my surprise greatest hits of 2021.

Matt Hill

White Pocket

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Nikon Z 6 with an Irix Cine 11mm T4.3 lens, lit with a Luxli Fiddle. Eleven frames shot at 20 seconds, T4.3, ISO 12800, stitched in PTGui and post-processed in Lightroom.

Until this year, one of my bucket list experiences was an overnight at White Pocket in the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument of northern Arizona. Boy am I lucky to have scratched this one off the list!

This location is on BLM land, and you can camp there overnight without a permit. If planning a visit, always check ahead of time, as it’s a major commitment to drive out there (in deep, deep sand). You might also consider hiring a local guide, like we did. They provided camp gear and food, and we drove ourselves in a high-clearance vehicle.

All disclaimers aside, this area is precious, wild, remote and located in dark, dark skies. Being there seems like being on the surface of another planet. The various colors and textures of rock are mesmerizing, and a joy to light paint.

I had been imagining this pano for years. Ever since my first daytime-only visit I’d been wanting to photograph the Vortex and Castle Rock paired with a low Milky Way.

When the chance finally came, I was with Gabe and we interpreted this scene in different ways. But we both had our tripod legs on the precipice of the Vortex, which dips down much more precariously than this image suggests.

The final pano is a PTGui blend of 11 images made from an ultrawide 11mm Irix Cine lens, in vertical orientation. As usual, I aggressively overlapped the images for a seamless stitch. I shot at ISO 12,800 to balance out the native T4.3 maximum aperture. And each 20-second exposure was halfway between Accurate and Default NPF exposure durations for crispy star points.

Lighting the monumental landform was tricky. I used a Luxli Fiddle to bounce light off the stone wall behind us—literally the only option as my angle of view exceeded 200 degrees.

This now hangs on my wall as a 72-inch Xposer print.

Bethesda Fountain, Central Park

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Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S lens at 34mm, lit with two Coast HP7R flashlights. 60 seconds, f/6.3, ISO 100.

During our New York City workshop with Gabe, it felt great to get back to my roots. Gabe and I had met and fostered our friendship over night photography in NYC, so returning to the noise and a cacophony of light sources was quite satisfying.

Bethesda Fountain is an icon within the world-famous Central Park. This was not my first time shooting here, but it was certainly the best lighting I’ve ever had. And that was due to teamwork!

Gabe and I placed our flashlights on the fountain’s edge to add sparkle to the gilded statuary. The light also filled in the dark areas in the water and under the body of the fountain. We placed the first light slightly left of camera, the second perpendicular and to the right. The result is, for me, a strong example of well-defined portrait lighting.

Of particular challenge was defining the falling water. The camera did capture all the info I needed, but some post-processing magic in Lightroom was required to render this version. Applying a Select Subject mask allowed me to control the highlights and contrast in the water. I added a Select Sky mask to darken the sky, and increased contrast. Finally, I darkened the bright clouds low to the horizon with a brush mask and emphasized the paths of the water cascading down to the final raised pool.

What you don’t see was the most “New York Moment” of all: the half-naked man collecting change from the bottom of the fountain during this exposure. Ah, New York, how I love you.

Tim Cooper

Desert Light, Joshua Tree National Park

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Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 12-24mm f/2.8 lens at 24mm. Multiple blended exposures of 30 seconds, f/8, ISO 1600 (foreground) and 15 minutes, f/8, ISO 100 (sky).

With its amazing array of rock formations, desert flora and pure night skies, Joshua Tree National Park is a night photographer's paradise. I was fortunate enough to be there for the near simultaneous events of our PhotoPills workshop and our video production for B&H’s OPTIC Imaging conference.

While scouting, Chris showed me this narrow defile near Skull Rock and I knew it was not only a great spot for our PhotoPills workshop but also a perfect spot for me to do a light painting demo for the conference. The shoot was, however, going to be a challenge.

When first entering the narrow gorge I saw the desert scrub plant wedged between the rounded rocks and knew I wanted to backlight the plant so it would anchor the foreground and highlight the texture in the rock formations.

The first problem was that there was no way one exposure would give me enough time to light paint the foreground and the background. The second problem was that I was so close to foreground rocks that even an aperture of f/16 would not provide perfect sharpness throughout the scene. So I decided to break up the scene into several exposures.

On the first exposure I focused on the foreground rocks and painted from behind to bring out the texture and to backlight the scrub plant. On the second exposure I refocused on the middle ground and walked through the scene while illuminating the walls of the gorge. The light on the far peak was supplied by passing cars.

After many practice runs and several failed attempts I was finally able to light the entire scene as I’d imagined it. For the final exposure I focused on the sky to create the trailing stars.

While the bulk of time creating this image occurred in the field, I also spent a significant amount of time post-processing. The same scene taken with different focus points results in small changes to the size of the subjects within the scene. This means that I had to resize each frame in Photoshop so that all of the rocks were the same size in the final image. Then each frame had to be blended together to create the illusion of continuous lighting. The easiest part was blending the star trails with the foreground.

While many night images can be made with a single exposure, sometimes it's easy to envision a shot that requires a lot more work. I’m glad I took on this particular challenge as it turned out to be one of my favorite images of 2021.

Star Trails, Valley View, Yosemite National Park

Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 12-24mm f/2.8 lens at 14mm. Foreground: three focus-stacked blue-hour images shot at 15 seconds, f/5, ISO 100. Sky: three exposures shot at 5 minutes, f/3.5, ISO 500.

Of the millions of photographs made in Yosemite National Park, some of my favorites are from the Valley View pull-off. The ever-changing volume of the Merced River revealing, hiding and reshaping the river's edge directly below the parking area has been fodder for an abundance of magical photographs. I was determined to add to that collection, hoping for an image that captured this view with the stars of the night sky.

My chance finally came in October when Matt and I led a group of night photographers for a workshop in Yosemite Valley. During our initial scout I was disappointed to find that the river had become so low from California's ongoing drought that this particular vantage point left much to be desired.

As luck would have it, our group experienced the break in California’s dry spell to a tune of over 6 inches of rain in less than 2 days. The aftermath of the rainfall was truly magical as all of the waterfalls were rejuvenated and the rivers sprung back to life.

After shuffling the schedule around a bit due to the rain, we were able to venture to the Valley View pull-off to begin a night of shooting. The swollen river produced a far more interesting foreground as it created new channels and connected the recently dried grass tussocks with the flow of the water.

Setting up near several of the workshop participants, we worked through the blue hour exposures (with focus stacking to accommodate the extreme depth of the scene) and waited for astronomical twilight to end.

Simply waiting and watching as the glow faded from the mountains was worth the whole excursion. After the show of color ended and we counted the lights of the climbers making camp on the vertical cliffs, darkness finally fell and we began our sky exposures. I chose to create star trails via a stack of three 5-minute exposures in the hopes of creating motion in the sky that would echo that of the river and that implied a mirror of the motion of the foreground grasses.

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Your Turn

What was your favorite night photograph of 2021? We’d love to see it! Share in the comments below, or on our Facebook page, or on Instagram (tag us @nationalparksatnight #nationalparksatnight #seizethenight). Be sure to tell a story too—the technical aspects, the challenge overcome, or a tale of the experience.

Then … have a Happy New Year!

Gabriel Biderman is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He is a Brooklyn-based fine art and travel photographer, and author of Night Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots (Peachpit, 2014). During the daytime hours you'll often find Gabe at one of many photo events around the world working for B&H Photo’s road marketing team. See his portfolio and workshop lineup at www.ruinism.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT