We're Going Live! Announcing 4 Online Courses for 2024

We all love being in the field to shoot, but we all also know that opening the shutter is only half the task of creating a great photograph. The other half is processing.

To help with that second half, National Parks at Night periodically offers online post-processing workshops, and today we’re excited to announce the next rounds of those. Moreover, not only are we announcing new sessions for two popular courses we’ve run in the past, but we’re also launching two brand new courses!

The two returning courses are Lightroom Live and Photoshop Live, both of which lead attendees through the basics of mastering these two incredible tools of the digital darkroom. The two new courses take things a few steps further, with Black and White Live and Processing Night Panoramas Live teaching attendees how to master the ins and outs of these specialty areas.

We’ll be hosting all four of these online courses this spring. Each will take place on weekday evenings, two evenings per week, for two weeks—for a total of eight hours of group education over four nights. We also limit each course to 12 attendees, to ensure time for individual attention to questions and answers. Along the same lines, after the course each attendee will be offered a half hour of one-on-one time with an instructor of their choice.

For more information about each of these online workshops, continue reading below. (And in each section, check out our free tip!)

Black and White Live

Black and white imagery has always had an aura of timelessness, drama and sophistication. Using this scheme at night is no different. Since photographers shooting in monochrome cannot lean on color to provide information in any given scene, we are forced to concentrate on other building blocks to evoke emotion, to tell a story or to capture the drama. This four-night online workshop will guide you on the journey through all of that and more.

This course will teach many aspects of the digital black and white process, from tips on capturing the best raw materials in the field to processing with what we consider the best software for the job, Silver Efex Pro.

You’ll also learn what creates a great black and white image, how to understand and control tonal contrast, how to apply local enhancements to create glowing images, and more.

Black and White Tip from Lance

If you’re setting out to create black and white images, learn to see that way in the field. Your camera can help you, as if you set it properly, then it can preview your images in black and white right on the LCD. In the camera settings, change Picture Style (Canon), Picture Control (Nikon) or Creative Style (Sony) to Monochrome or Black and White. This will help you avoid passing up photographing a scene because it lacks interesting color. One example of this would be an urban night scene illuminated exclusively by sodium vapor lights. In color, those scenes are usually quite unappealing, but they often look great as black and white.

Processing Night Panoramas Live

Stitching panoramas can be challenging enough with daytime photographs—the complexity increases even more for images captured at night. If you’ve ever struggled with stitching panorama panels, this is the course for you. We will teach how to process simple and complex night panos in Adobe Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and, most importantly, in PTGUI Pro.

In this online workshop you’ll learn not just how to stitch basic panoramas, but also how to blend twilight and star-point panos in Photohsop and PTGui, how to stitch vertoramas with both star-point and star-trail toppers, how to understand and choose different projections, how to create “tiny planet” photos, and more. The course will also feature a full demonstration of the best stitching software out there, PTGui Pro, with a focus on how to use it for night panos.

Pano Processing Tip from Matt

When stitching a vertorama in PTGUI Pro, be sure to choose among the transverse projection variants. Then click and drag to place the true horizon on the center horizontal line. (If the horizon is behind a landform, align with that instead of the skyline.) Chances are the final result will look just like you envisioned … perhaps better!

Lightroom Live

For 99.9 percent of the photography world, the process of post-production starts with Lightroom. Yet so many photographers feel that they don’t fully understand the software, let alone know enough to wield its full potential.

With a strict focus on the Library and Develop modules, in this online course you'll learn how to add keywords, create collections, globally adjust your images and fine-tune your masterpiece with local adjustment tools.

And as a bonus, you’ll get our video Lightroom: Correcting Your Catalog Chaos.

Lightroom Tip from Gabe

Most of our night skies have atmospheric haze, especially from the horizon to 20 degrees above, which is where the core of the Milky Way tends to reside most of the year. Lightroom’s Dehaze slider was built to cut through haze and provide more separation in the lower-contrast areas of the scene—but it also works wonders on dark night skies! A little Dehaze can go a long way in making your stars and the Milky Way pop. Watch out though, because Dehaze also increases saturation and can make your skies too purple or blue, so be ready for a potential color adjustment afterward.

Photoshop Live

Photoshop is a challenging program to learn on your own. And it’s also massive. But don’t worry—as a night photographer, you don’t need to learn every tool, setting and checkbox in order to harness the program’s power. Having a good foundation of the program and some basic knowledge of key features (as well as intricate knowledge of some subtle features) will help you develop the skills necessary to create advanced night photography composites and finely crafted images.

Our areas of focus will be understanding the architecture of Photoshop, strategies and best practices for using layers, mastering advanced local adjustments, masking, and much more!

Photoshop Tip from Chris

Photoshop has lots of selection tools. Magic Wand. Quick Selection. Object Selection. There’s a tool for selecting the sky, or a subject, or a focus range, or a color range. Which is best? All of them! Each of the selection tools has their pros and cons, and situations where they outperform their counterparts. Therefore, learn how to use each of these tools and practice with them all. You’ll learn the situations that each excels in, and then you’ll always know which to use in different scenarios.

Come Learn With Us Online

Wherever your next passion for learning lies, we hope that one of these online courses can help. For more info on each, click here:

• Black and White Live

• Lightroom Live

• Photoshop Live

• Processing Night Panoramas Live

We look forward to seeing you there!

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

Five Questions: Meteor Shower in Death Valley, Leveling Bases, Coast Flashlights and More

If you have questions, we like to try to have answers. Below are five examples.

This installment of our “Five Questions” series features inquiries about photographing meteor showers in Death Valley National Park, diffusing an LED panel, saving stacked files, Coast flashlights and using leveling bases for panos.

If you have any questions you would like to throw our way, please contact us anytime. Questions could be about gear, national parks and other photo locations, post-processing techniques, field etiquette, or anything else related to night photography. #SeizeTheNight!

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1. Meteor Shower Locations in Death Valley

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Moon over Mesquite Flat Dunes, Death Valley National Park. © 2016 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 lens. 10 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 3200.

Question:

My wife and I and our two dogs are going to Death Valley National Park to shoot the Geminid Meteor Shower in December. Finding a foreground subject is going to be a challenge because the radiant is relatively high (72 degrees according to PhotoPills). Here is a list of potential foregrounds I have come up with: Mesquite Flat Dunes, twenty-mule team wagons, Ashford Mill, Keane Wonder Mine, Twenty Mule Team Canyon, Badwater Basin, the palm grove at Furnace Creek Ranch. Any thoughts would be much appreciated. — H.J.

Answer:

Yay! What a great idea. We love photographing meteor showers, and we love Death Valley.

As for locations: If you want the radiant in the frame, you’re looking for a view toward east-northeast. With that in mind …

• Mesquite Flat Dunes always works. Be ready to walk in a bit to find dunes without footprints. Also be ready (food, water, second camera) to stay out there, because you’re likely not going to be walking back and forth to the car.

• Twenty-mule team wagons: I assume you mean the ones at the Borax Museum. I wouldn’t shoot there. The wagons are surrounded by a fence. Also, the east-northeast view will have the road in the background of your frame, and being so close to Furnace Creek, cars will definitely be driving through.

• Ashford Mill could be interesting. You could get an east-northeast angle from behind the structure; the road would be in the background, but I’d be surprised if another car goes back there at night. The downside is that there’s not a lot of variation to the location. It’s primarily just two structures, and one of them is more visually interesting than the other. I’d definitely scout it in daytime before committing to a night shoot there, because it’s just isolated enough so that changing locations midstream would be impractical.

• Keane Wonder Mine is a fun location generally, but you’d have a tough time finding a good east-northeast angle.

• I love shooting in Twenty Mule Team Canyon. Interesting rock formations that aren’t difficult to navigate on foot, and plenty of foreground material from east-northeast angles.

• Badwater Basin is great any time of day or night, but it wouldn’t be the easiest spot for this particular shoot. From any east-northeast angle you’ll have either the parking lot and/or road in the background, so you’ll be dealing with headlights. My other concern is that when the shower is peaking, the radiant will be so high that you’ll need to be pointing upward with a wide-angle lens. That would minimize any flat foreground at the bottom of the frame. I’m sure there are creative ways to make it work, but my hunch is that making it work well would be challenging, so I’d definitely day-scout any ideas before trying.

• The palm grove at Furnace Creek is an interesting place to shoot, but there’s a lot of artificial light in the area. You’d need to fight with that to find a balance that would work with star captures.

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Golden Canyon, Death Valley National Park. © 2020 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. 43 stacked images shot at 4 minutes, f/4, ISO 400.

Here are a few spots I like besides what you’ve mentioned:

• I’d consider the Wildrose Charcoal Kilns. The caveat is that it will be cold up there in December, and there’s even a chance the road will be snowed in, so I’d ask a ranger before committing to the drive. But you’d surely find an east-northeast view you like, with a very interesting foreground.

• The east-northeast view at Ubehebe Crater is spectacular. It would be cold up there at night, but the east-northeast view is also right next to the parking lot, so you could wait out the exposures in your warm car if needed. However, the crater is very dark without moonlight, which you won’t have on the peak nights, so you’d probably want to get a twilight exposure to blend in. That would require some precise positioning and waiting around for quite a while without moving the camera. Also, the rim of the crater sometimes gets too windy for even a tripod, so there’s a possibility you’d have to abandon the location mid-shoot.

• Golden Canyon could be fun. Steep walls, but you’ll be pointing up anyway. Also, it’s close to the services at Furnace Creek.

Good luck, and please let us know how this goes! We would love to see the results. — Chris

Note: If you’re also interested in getting out to shoot next month’s Gemenids, be sure to pick up a copy of our e-book Great Balls of Fire: A Guide to Photographing Meteor Showers.

2. Viola Diffusion

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Luxli Viola LED Light Kit with Softbox & Diffusion Filter.

Question:

I have been playing with the Luxli Viola for few months. Do you ever use the diffuser for it? Any tips on using it? — Steve W.

Answer:

I do use the diffuser on occasion, and sometimes even add a piece of neutral density gel inside if I’m looking for the subtlest kiss of light. Mostly, I pull out the diffuser when I’m aiming for a subtle natural effect, or for night portraits.

Another great tool to diffuse the Viola is a 2- or 3-foot square scrim that mimics the effect of a softbox. That’s not always practical on location, and it requires some additional grip equipment, but it is a nice option to have. An old picture frame with a piece of white sheet stretched across it is all it takes! — Lance

3. Saving or Deleting Files for Stacking

Question:

How do you manage the number and size of photo files when stacking? For example, Starry Landscape Stacker uses TIFF images to combine into one huge file. Can I delete those individual files and keep just the final image? When I create a stack in Photoshop, can I delete the images the final photo is composed of? — Sue W.

Answer:

For Starry Landscape Stacker or any other program that creates JPEGs or TIFFs to bring them into their program: Once you finish your processing and are 100 percent happy with it, you can definitely delete those individual JPGs/TIFFs. Save yourself some storage! However, if you do that, make sure you have the final file organized somewhere that makes sense to you. I typically will import this new TIFF into Lightroom, where I can do a final edit and store it in my catalog.

However, there is a caveat: What if you want to re-process the idea later? For example, I just recently revisited and reprocessed my “Road to the Milky Way” image that I originally worked on two years ago. I still had all those individual TIF files in a folder on my hard drive—that was a time-saver for me, because I didn’t have to re-export them all.

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Road to the Milky Way. © 2019 Gabriel Biderman. Nikon D5 with an Irix 15mm f/2.4 lens. Foreground: 13 minutes, f/2.5, ISO 1600; background: nine frames shot at 25 seconds, f/2.5, ISO 6400 and stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker.

So there can be benefits to keeping or deleting those raw materials. The key is that whatever you do, have them organized. Whenever I create JPGs or TIFFs for third-party software or any other use, I always store them in a subfolder that is clearly marked so that I can find them down the road.

If you do delete those images, be sure you are deleting only those exported files—not your original RAW files.

Stacking in Photoshop is a different matter. For this you’re not creating multiple exported files and importing them, you’re instead opening a new Photoshop file with all those images as layers. This creates one very large file. So the question isn’t really about saving lots of individual files, but rather whether to save one giant file with tons of layers or to flatten the layers and save a smaller file. That’s a personal choice, and can be affected by circumstances.

I try to get all my layer editing adjustments done in one take, then flatten the file and save it back to Lightroom. However, if I am not done editing, or if I want to keep a version to revisit at a later date, I’ll save the layered file as a PSB (Photoshop’s large-file format), which Lightroom can absorb as part of the catalog. — Gabe

4. Value of Coast Flashlights

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Coast HP7R.

Question:

In your gear list and blog posts you pretty much always mention the Coast HP7R, Coast HP5R or another Coast flashlight for light painting. I’m curious why. If I have another brand of flashlight that has the same lumens output, what’s the difference? — Lynn

Answer:

You can use just about any flashlight for light painting, but we like Coast for the quality of the light (i.e, the high CRI value), as well as the precision of the focusing. Most flashlights have a lot of “spill” around a bright center spot, but Coast lights have a patented focusing mechanism that concentrates the light more intensely, as well as evenly across the beam with less spill around the edges. This makes for much more control when light painting. — Lance

5. Is a Leveling Base Redundant?

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Bryce Canyon pano. © 2019 Matt Hill. Nikon Z 6 with a Zeiss 15mm Distagon f/2.8 lens. 14 stitched frames shot at 16 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Question:

I read your blog post on night panoramas and I have a question. I have a Really Right Stuff TVC34L tripod with a BH-55 ball head, both with levels. Do I also need a leveling head? — Brien

Answer:

Technically you do not need to have a leveling base if your tripod gets leveled first. After that, anything mounted to it will pan without tilting to the left or right.

However, sometimes it’s annoying to have to separately adjust three legs to level the tripod, especially on uneven ground. Seriously. That’s the moment you wish you had a leveling base. It’s pretty much always faster to level with one. I find them invaluable when I’m serious about shooting for pano stitching.

If you shoot panos only occasionally and you’re willing to tolerate the minute adjustments to legs and then checking the bubble level on top of the tripod over and over, then no sweat—it can be tedious, but it’s easy enough. But if panos are going to be a regular thing for you, a leveling base will improve the experience.

For the record, I use the Acratech Leveling Base. I love it. — Matt

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). 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

Five Questions: Coast Flashlights, Lightning, Custom Menus and More

Everyone knows the answers to some questions, and below you’ll find five of the answers we know. That might sound impressive, but it took all five of us to answer these, so …

This installment of our “Five Questions” series features inquiries about Coast flashlights, lightning processing, custom menus, books and panos.

If you have any questions you would like to throw our way, please contact us anytime. Questions could be about gear, national parks and other photo locations, post-processing techniques, field etiquette, or anything else related to night photography. #SeizeTheNight!

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1: Which Coast is King?

Q: If you could have only one model of the Coast flashlight, what would it be? — Larry B.

A: If I could have only one, it would be the HP5R. It has two brightness settings, is bright but not too bright, feaures a focusing beam and sports a rechargeable battery. For another $10, I'd also get the low-powered G9 and use that for shooting in moonless astro-landscape situations and for seeing in the dark without ruining night vision. — Lance

2: Layering Lightning

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Lightning at Devils Tower National Monument. © 2019 Matt Hill. Nikon Z 6 with a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens. Six stacked frames photographed at Bulb, f/8, ISO 200.

Q: There’s a photo on your website you made at Devils Tower—how did you get the lightning in the shot? Did you just stack the exposures in Photoshop then use the Lighten blend mode? Or did you use some light detector to trigger the shots? — Ed F.

A: The former. I composed, set the aperture and ISO for a good lightning strike, then let the camera run through continuous shots. I set the camera to Bulb mode, then I held the shutter open until a bolt hit, and then I closed the exposure and immediately started another.

Why did I just keep the shutter open for, say, 30 seconds each time? I didn’t want too many strikes in one frame, because that would make it harder to select specific strikes to composite later.

As for post-production, your hunch is right— it works exactly like stacking star trails. Open all the images as layers in Photoshop, select all the layers and then change the blend mode to Lighten. I then used layer masks to call out specific strikes and block out everything else. — Matt

3. Custom Menu Contents

Q: Regarding your recent post “Five Field Tips to Make Night Photography Go a Little Smoother,” could you elaborate on which menu options you include on your custom menu? — Larry B.

A: As I mentioned in the post, I set the custom menu in my camera with the settings I use most often, so I can access them quickly in the field. Here is the list of what I include in my Nikon Z 6 custom menu:

For night photography

• Long Exposure Noise Reduction

• Monitor Brightness

• Viewfinder Brightness

For general photography

• Format Memory Card

• Auto Bracketing

• Double Exposure

• Focus Peaking

• Clean Image Sensor

For comparison, here’s what Chris includes in his Nikon D5 custom menu:

• Virtual Horizon

• Monitor Brightness

• Long Exposure Noise Reduction

• Exposure Delay Mode

• Self-Timer

Remember, every camera is different, so your camera might allow you to easily access some items that I find more difficult to access on mine. You also might not use some features that I do, and vice versa. But this is all exactly why the custom menu is so powerful—it’s custom to exactly what you want! — Tim

4. The Elephant Book in the Room

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Q: Thank you for the recent awesome blog post and video on night photography books. That combined three of my favorite things: history, books and art. Another night photography-related book you may find interesting is Thirty Times a Minute by Colleen Plumb. She photographed images of captive elephants projected onto landscapes. I found it a very unique way to shoot at night, and her stories about the elephants are touching. — Vince G.

A: One look at the production and importance of Thirty Times a Minute and I had to add it to my cart! I love that the publisher added a video walk through of the book.

Not all art fits inside a book, and when you look at Colleen's projections, you have to ask how these moving images become two-dimensional stills. I love the “transparency” images, though I'm curious what it would have looked like to have the transparency of the original film placed over where it was projected—like those history books wherein you lift the transparency of what it used to look like to reveal what it looks like now.

I’m glad you like our coverage of our favorite night photography books and the Bookshelf page on our website. Books can be a universal inspiration, and this was a long-overdue project that we were excited to share and that we want to continue to grow. — Gabe

5: Full Moon Pano

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Ubehebe Crater, Death Valley National Park. © 2020 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens at 24mm. Eleven stitched frames photographed at 10 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 2500.

Q: Thank you for the many instructive and inspiring blog posts, and particularly for this one about Ubehebe Crater. Either you planned well or were lucky to be there during a full moon. Could you have gotten a good image with quarter moon? Crescent moon? No moon? — Paul B.

A: Did I plan or was I lucky? A little bit of both.

I made that pano during a workshop, which we had planned for a moonlit week. We love light painting under moonlight, and Death Valley has a lot of subject matter conducive to that strategy. But shooting at the crater on that particular date during moonlight was just a matter of using the conditions at hand in the best way possible.

In other words, while planning for a specific photo has plenty of merits, successfully shooting as a long-term endeavor can have less to do with sticking to strict guidelines about when to shoot and more to do with knowing what and how to shoot in different conditions. With the latter approach, I can be productive regardless of the situation. So, I didn’t plan to be at Ubehebe Crater during a full moon so I could shoot that pano; rather, I was at Ubehebe and knew what I could and couldn’t do under the full-moon sky I was presented with.

And yes, I definitely could have made the image under a quarter or crescent moon, when the light is even gentler. I just would have needed to shoot at a higher ISO to keep the stars sharp. Honestly, I may have preferred that, because the sky would have revealed even more stars. Next time! Because successful photography can also be about going back to re-shoot in different conditions. 😃 — Chris

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). 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

Five Questions: Moonrises, Laowas, Acadia National Park and More

For every person who asks a question, a good hundred more probably had the same question and didn’t ask. So we like to share the questions we get and the answers we give.

This installment of our “Five Questions” series features inquiries about moonrises, Laowa lenses, the Nikon D780, night panoramas and Acadia National Park.

If you have any questions you would like to throw our way, please contact us anytime. Questions could be about gear, national parks and other photo locations, post-processing techniques, field etiquette, or anything else related to night photography. #SeizeTheNight!

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1: Rad Moon Rising

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Supermoon over Death Valley National Park. Nikon D500 with a Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm. 1/200, f/8, ISO 800. © 2016 Lance Keimig.

Q: Last year when driving home I passed a small lake that had a huge red/pink full moon rising over it. I tried to find out when this may happen again. Unfortunately I did not see how to get an easy answer to when there would be another full moon rising while the sun is setting, so I reverted to tedious data lookup. How can I plan this easier? And when will the moon still have a pinkish glow—when it beats the sun in rising, or when the sun beats it in setting? — A.B.

A: The full moon always rises near sunset, never at sunrise. The full moon does, however, set at sunrise. (The opposite, for both cases, is true of the new moon.) Either way is a good way to shoot the moon near the horizon during soft light.

The exact times vary quite a bit—by up to as much as an hour, depending on the exact timing of the full moon. In some months, the best timing may be one day before or after the full moon. The moon rises about 45 to 55 minutes later each day during its 28-day cycle, but the sunset time varies by only a minute or two. 

You can use PhotoPills or a website like TimeandDate.com to find out the date of the full moon each month, and then check the sunset and sunrise times within a couple of days of the full moon.

The “best” time for moon photography depends on the effect you are looking for, and the landscape where you are photographing. If you want a warm glow on the landscape, look for a moonrise that’s just before sunset. But I generally prefer a moonrise about 10 to 15 minutes after sunset, when the exposure balances nicely between the moon and the soft light on the land. By about 20 minutes after sunset, the exposure difference between the moon and the landscape is too great to capture in a single image.

The color in the moon is completely dependent on atmospheric conditions––the amount of dust, moisture or pollution in the air. The more particulates, the more color. When the moon is just rising, you are viewing it through hundreds of miles of atmosphere. When it is high in the sky, you are viewing it through a single layer of atmosphere, which is why it is almost always white. — Lance

2: Learning About Laowa

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Venus Optics Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D lens for Nikon Z.

Q: I have the Nikon Z 6 and am looking for a wide-angle lens that I can use for night photography. I saw this lens on the B&H Photo website: Venus Optics Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D for Nikon Z. What do you know about this lens/company? Quality? Performance? Any info? — Terry K.

A: Summary: It’s a yes.

Why? Four reasons.

1. It’s an incredibly small, light, fast and sharp lens.

2. At f/2.8, the coma almost disappears, and at f/4 it’s totally gone. To see a technical test I did, download and open these files in Photoshop and zoom to 100 percent. The star-field boxes are 100 percent crops. The gray zoom boxes are exaggerated zooms at 800-plus percent to show the actual shapes of stars. (Note: These are totally unedited photos. The chromatic aberrations can be easily removed, but I chose not to remove them for what were just test images.)

3. The metal lens hood is reversible.

4. It beat my Zeiss Distagon (gasp!) in regard to coma. Wow. And I have an extra stop of light when I need it. And it’s half the size.

So, yeah, the Laowa is fab.

There is one major downside, however, which may or may not matter to you: It does not have electronic contacts. So you will not have the metadata in Lightroom that identifies the lens or which aperture was used for the photographs. — Matt

3: Switching from Canon to D780

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Nikon D780.

Q: My Canon 6D has been pushed to its limits and I’m seeing too much ISO noise, so I’m looking into changing over to Nikon. Have you used the D780? — J.M.

A: The short answer: I’ll definitely be buying one. The image quality seems similar to or better than the Nikon Z 6, which is noticeably better than the D750 I’ve been using for several years. The D780 image quality at 12,800 is outstanding, and is definitely usable at 25,600. The camera also has extended shutter speeds down to 15 minutes.

They moved a couple of buttons around––which shouldn’t be an issue for you coming over from Canon. Other than that, it feels very comfortable and familiar for a Nikon user. I also like that they stuck with two SD card slots and didn’t go for the expensive XQD, or worse, one XQD and one SD slot.

For the long answer, see our recent blog post “Best of Both Worlds—The Nikon D780 Combines the Advantages of the D750 and Z 6.”

My suggestion is: Yes, jump on it! It may just be the last camera you’ll buy. — Lance

4: Night-Pano Follow-Ups

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Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park. Nikon D750 with a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens. Sixteen stitched frames shot at 10 seconds, f/2.2, ISO 6400. © 2018 Matt Hill.

Q: After reading your blog post on how to plan and shoot a panorama, I have a few questions:

1. I have an Acratech GP-ss ball head, which can be mounted upside down and used as a leveling base. So I presume I wouldn’t need a separate leveling base—or would you recommend having one anyway?

2. I want to rotate my setup exactly 30 degrees between each frame. How could I do that without turning on my headlamp?

3. I’ve seen some photographers use a Nodal Ninja Advanced Rotator. It has different settings with click stops to confirm you’ve reached a pre-set degree. I believe it could be of help as I wouldn’t have to engage my red light. Are you familiar with these rotators? — Roger R.

A: I’m so happy to see you’re inspired to get out and shoot some night panos! My answers:

1. I am a fan of having a separate leveling base (and I have the Acratech). It honestly doesn’t add much to the operating size and weight, and it benefits all my setups (not just panos). Leveling is simply faster with a leveling base than by adjusting tripod legs. That said, I have not attempted using the GP-ss inverted, but that’s a curious and wonderful thing it’s capable of doing!

2. You may consider getting some glow-in-the-dark model airplane paint and making 30-degree ticks on your pano base, as well as making reference points (two, three or four) on the top part. Come to think of it, I may do that myself!

3. I know two people I really trust who have used rotators, including Gabe. They require setup and calibration. But having those clicks is very helpful for confidence and maintaining your night vision.

   There are other options for indexing rotators that have detents—be sure to examine the intervals you can choose:

• Sunwayfoto DDP-64SI and DDY-64I Indexing Rotator Combo

• Nodal Ninja Advanced Rotator RD8-II

• Sunwayfoto DDP-64M Indexing Rotator

• Manfrotto 300N (3414) Panoramic Head

Keep in mind that all this gear is great to have for leveling up control over the process of shooting a pano at night, but it’s not required. The most important thing is the proper planning and technique that we covered in the original post. Have fun with your panos! — Matt

5: Acadia Aspirations

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Eagle Lake, Acadia National Park. Nikon D3s with a 28-70mm f/2.8 lens, light-painted with moonlight and a Coast HP7R warmed with a 1/2 CTO gel. 20 seconds, f/8, ISO 3200. © 2017 Chris Nicholson.

Q: My husband and I are planning on going to Acadia. We’ve never been to Maine before. We started looking for places to go and stay mainly for night photography with ocean, rivers or lakes with views in or around the park. The area is huge! Was hoping you could give some suggestions on specific areas to stay and go. — Eileen M.

A: You could drive in pretty much any random direction, and you’ll be fine. 😊

Acadia is actually a pretty small park, relatively. But there’s a lot of diversity there for photography.

Anywhere along the Ocean Road will be great for coastal/ocean scenes, and if you’re up for a 20- to 30-minute walk, then I highly recommend Great Head at sunrise. Good spots more accessible from the car include Boulder Beach, Monument Cove and the cliffs in between; Sand Beach; and anywhere along the road between Sand Beach and where the road goes back into the forest.

For lakes, Jordan Pond and Eagle Lake are my favorites. And again, if you’re up for a hike, then I suggest taking the Jordan Pond loop trail all the way around (know that there is a short section that requires going over rocks). In that same area of the park, I recommend hiking up South Bubble for the views over Jordan Pond and the coast, then to Bubble Rock, then from there up to North Bubble, then along the ridge toward a beautiful granite overlook of Eagle Lake.

From late spring to early autumn, you can shoot the Milky Way over Eagle Lake from the main parking lot at the north end.

Also, if you want a quieter experience, check out the Schoodic Peninsula, which is the only part of the park that’s on the mainland. It’s about a 45-minute drive from Mount Desert Island. It has beautiful coastal scenery along almost the whole loop drive. At low tide you can walk out to Little Moose Island, which is beautiful as well. If there’s a storm while you’re in the area, the point of Schoodic Penninsula is where you want to be the next day to shoot the waves crashing on the rocks, in the last couple of hours of the tide coming in. (Just don’t get too close to the treacherous water.)

For more information, I can recommend two excellent photography guides: Photographing Acadia National Park: The Essential Guide to When, Where, and How and The Photographer’s Guide to Acadia, both written by photographer friends of mine, Colleen Miniuk-Sperry and Mike Hudson, respectively. You could also check out my book, Photographing National Parks, for some more general ideas on Acadia and for tips about scouting your shoot.

As for places to stay: Bar Harbor is the center of activity, and has restaurants, coffee shops, etc. It can also be “bustling” when a cruise ship is anchored. If you’d like a quieter experience, consider Southwest Harbor on the west side of the island (known locally as “the quiet side”).

Finally, it’s good to know that due to the current public health situation, Maine has instituted a temporary 14-day quarantine for visitors from out of state. The order is expected to expire sometime between July 1 and August 31, depending on the outcome of some pending regulatory decisions. You’ll want to confirm the status before traveling. — Chris

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). 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

How I Got the Shot: Ubehebe Crater at Death Valley National Park

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Ubehebe Crater, Death Valley National Park. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens at 24mm. 11 stitched frames photographed at 10 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 2500.

The Location

Ubehebe Crater could be the most underrated natural feature in Death Valley National Park. Lots of folks know about Badwater Basin, where hexagonal formations rise from the salt flats; and Mesquite Flat Dunes, where sand rises and dips in patterns that lead toward desert-mountain backgrounds; and Racetrack Playa, where rocks appear to sail across the dried, cracked mud.

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Figure 1. Look out!

All those things are well-renowned, and they should be. But I’m continually bemused at how few people know about Ubehebe, a half-mile-wide, 600-foot-deep volcanic crater. Why? Because it’s amazing!

Standing at the edge (carefully, Figure 1) reveals a beautiful, mesmerizing landscape. Standing at the bottom is awe-inspiring, as you look up and marvel at the power of nature to blast such a massive amount of earth over an area of 6 square miles.

It’s also a fun place to hike, as immediately to the south sit a few more smaller craters. You can hike along the rims or to the bottoms and explore the wonders of geology and wilderness.

However, one thing that Ubehebe Crater is not? Easy to photograph. The main attraction is the main crater, and it’s a pretty massive subject.

The first time I photographed it, in 2017 (Figure 2), I used a Nikon 14-24mm lens at its widest zoom, which was OK, but I could barely fit the whole crater in the frame. Moreover, at that wide a focal length you really need foreground material to help create a sense of depth in the composition, and the crater rim offers very little of that.

In 2018 I got to try shooting the crater with the rectilinear Irix 11mm lens (Figure 3). That allowed me to get the whole crater into a 35mm frame, and some wild clouds helped add a special dynamic to the scene, but I still wasn’t thrilled with the photo. I visited again in 2019, and didn’t even bother shooting. I was completely out of ideas for how to make the scene work in a photograph.

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Figure 2. Nikon D3s with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 1/1250, f/8, ISO 400.

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Figure 3. Nikon D5 with an Irix 11mm f/4 lens. Three blended exposures of 1/640, 1/1250 and 1/2500, at f/8, ISO 100.

Another challenge to photographing the crater is that its sharp angle of decline prevents sunlight from fully illuminating the interior unless the sun is relatively high in the sky. So on a bright day, you need to choose between harsh light at midday or big shadows earlier or later. You might think that overcast conditions are the answer, but I’ve tried that too. Flat light wipes out all depth and diminishes the warm-toned hues on the eastern flank that are such a crucial part of the crater’s aesthetics.

Honestly, as much as I love Ubehebe Crater, by early 2019 I’d just about given up trying to make a photograph of it that I like.

The Aha Moment

Then in February 2020 I was back at Death Valley for National Parks at Night’s very first Alumni Excursion, a 5-night, 6-day photography jaunt through this amazing place. Toward the end of the workshop, we made a day and night trip to Racetrack Playa, and on the way we stopped at Ubehebe Crater.

I was leading this workshop with Lance Keimig and Matt Hill, and Matt had never been to the crater before. As most people do, he loved it. And he said, “On the way back tonight it’d be awesome to shoot a moonlit pano of this.”

Aha! That was the answer. I knew it right away. I had to get this image.

So, we scouted. Matt went off to explore his idea for the photograph, and I went off to explore mine. I hiked along the northern rim to find an angle where I could get a good vantage point over the crater with the snowy peaks of Hunter Mountain in the background. I made a quick auto-pano using my cell phone, just to make sure the composition would work the way I wanted (Figure 4). Then I checked PhotoPills to confirm a suspicion: That evening, I could shoot the full moon drifting through background of the scene. That was my shot. It was scouted and ready to be executed hours later, in the dark of the California desert.

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Figure 4. A daylight test pano from my scouted spot, using my Google Pixel 3a.

The Shoot

Unfortunately, the Racetrack is hard to leave, and we stayed late. By the time we returned to Ubehebe, the moon had drifted way out of the scene. But it was still high, and delicately sidelighting the crater, and that was beautiful.

The hour was late—well after midnight on what had been a long day at the end of an adventure-filled week—and I was exhausted. But I was also determined. I was getting this image.

With my eyes half closed, I carried my tripod, Nikon D5 and two lenses one-quarter mile to my spot. I set up, tested each lens, and decided the Nikon 14-24mm (zoomed all the way to 24mm) was my best option for creating the image I had in my mind.

The first key to shooting a pano is to level the entire setup. I own a Gitzo GSLVLS Leveling head, but unfortunately didn’t have it with me. So I needed to level manually. That required three steps:

1. leveling my tripod legs by using the bubble level on the top as a guide (Figure 5, left, bottom circle)

2. leveling my ball head by using its bubble level the same as above (Figure 5, left, top circle)

3. using the in-camera Virtual Horizon to ensure that all the leveling was correct by panning the setup left to right and back again and watching to see that the camera stayed level across the scene (Figure 5, right)

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Figure 5. Perfectly level in every way.

I fired off a couple of test photos to nail down an exposure. The NPF Rule told me I could shoot as long as 10 seconds before the stars began to trail. That was easy under moonlight, as I could achieve that shutter speed at ISO 640 with the lens wide open. However, I unconditionally trust the ISOs of the D5, so I pushed to ISO 2500, which allowed me to close the aperture to f/5.6 and really take advantage of the best sharpness levels of the lens.

I was finally ready to shoot. I started with the camera panned far to the left, way past where I needed it for the final composition, to give myself flexibility to crop in later. I shot the first frame. Using the engraved degree markings on the bottom of my Really Right Stuff BH-55 ball head, I rotated the camera 15 degrees to the right, then shot again. (That’s really more overlap than I needed, but I always prefer to have more than less.) I repeated this nine times, until I was shooting far right of my composition, for a total of 11 frames.

The Post-Production

The only change I wanted to make before assembling the pano was to apply lens corrections. This is best practice when making panos (particularly at night), so that any natural vignetting of the lens is removed. Otherwise, the color and brightness of the sky can fluctuate across the final panorama.

In Lightroom, I selected all 11 images in Grid view (Figure 6), then clicked to the Develop module. At the bottom right, I toggled the switch next to the Sync button to enable Auto Sync (Figure 7). Then I opened the Lens Corrections panel, then checked the boxes to turn on Remove Chromatic Aberration and Enable Profile Corrections. Then I went back to the bottom right and turned off Auto Sync.

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Figure 6.

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Figure 7.

To start the stitch, with the 11 frames still selected, in the menu I chose Photo > Photo Merge > Merge to Panorama. In the resulting dialog (Figure 8), I selected Spherical for the Projection, because it created the look I had in mind more closely than Cylindrical. I choose not to use Boundary Warp, Fill Edges, Auto Crop or Auto Settings, because I prefer to perform those tasks manually and deliberately. I did, however, click on Create Stack, because I like my multi-frame images to be neatly organized in the Lightroom catalog.

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Figure 8.

I clicked Merge, and Lightroom did a great job stitching the 11 frames.

I switched to the Basic panel to apply some basic edits to Whites and Clarity, to make the overall image “pop” a little, then I manually made my crop to hone in on the elements I felt were most important to the composition (Figure 9).

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Figure 9.

I felt the sky and stars needed even more punch, so I used the Graduated Filter tool to create a mask over the top half of the frame. I wanted the changes to affect only the sky, and not the mountains, so I enabled Range Mask and chose Color. Using the Color Range Selector (the eyedropper) to sample the blue sky, then used the Amount slider to tweak the selection. When I was happy with my mask (Figure 10), I made minor adjustments to Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Blacks, Texture, Clarity and Sharpness—all to add just a little extra “oomph” to the sky, to make it appear in the image how it looked to me in person.

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Figure 10.

Because the moon was off camera-right, the right side of the sky was noticeably brighter. To tone that down a bit, I created another mask in the same way as above, but instead of the top of the frame, I targeted the right (Figure 11). I then brought up Dehaze a bit to increase the local contrast of that portion of the frame, making it appear a little darker, and massaged the mask a bit to ensure a transition that looks natural.

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Figure 11.

Wrapping Up

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The final image. Ubehebe Crater, Death Valley National Park. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm lens at 24mm. 11 stitched frames photographed at 10 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 2500.

That’s how I finally, after four tries, made an image of Ubehebe Crater that I’m happy with.

The 3-year process from first visit to final image reinforced three ideas:

1. Revisiting locations almost always leads to making better photographs.

2. Photographing at night almost always allows for a unique way of photographing a scene.

3. Creative breakthroughs can come from listening to what others think. I love teamwork and collaboration! (Thank you, Matt!)

Am I now done with Ubehebe? No way! On my hike back to the car that night, I thought of another idea, and I’m confident it will work. Stay tuned. Some night I’ll shoot that idea too.

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). 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