I keep saying it, but I’ve been terrible over the last year or so at keeping up to date with processing and posting my photos, and writing about them.

Finally, I’ve finished sorting out the photos from my August 2011 return trip to Galloway Forest Park — prompted by planning a trip to the Isle of Arran this Easter. We’d actually originally intended to go to the Isle of Arran for the August Bank Holiday. However, due to a lack of planning, we decided at the last minute to return to Galloway, with the challenge of walking the Dungeon Hills range — from near Loch Doon, to Loch Dee — in a day. We’d planned to do this on our previous trip to Galloway Forest Park, but due to weather and tardiness, had abandoned the idea. I took my Canon EOS 450D with EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens and my Manfrotto tripod (which didn’t get used!).

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I woke up this morning and Tweeted “What to do today?”. I decided I would sit down and sort out some of the backlog of photos on my hard drive. Then it started snowing. Then it started snowing even heavier. So I decided to head for the hills — probably not terribly wise when the car is due a service. I was going to head to Saddleworth Moor, but the visibility was really poor, so I wasn’t going to get any beautiful fresh snow landscapes. A quick survey of my OS map had me heading for lower ground at Dove Stone Reservoir. (The above image is actually looking north from the weir to Yeoman Hey Reservoir).

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Last week saw the return of the BBC’s Stargazing LIVE, three days of live shows celebrating “the wonders of our night sky”. After an after work meal, I returned home to catch the end of the main show and the “Back to Earth” Q&A show. Fortunately, the sky over Manchester was clear, with no clouds and little haze (a rare event). So, with a little inspiration from the show I set-up the camera on my balcony to take a startrail facing north.

I’ve tried to take startrails of this view a few times before, but they’ve never really turned out. This one came out ok!

It isn’t my greatest star trail, and there’s a lot of light pollution*, but I thought it was good enough to upload to Flickr, and add to the Stargazing LIVE Flickr Group on Tuesday evening after I’d been to the pub.

Watching the show again on Wednesday, I was pleasantly surprised to hear my name read out by comedian John Bishop, as my photo was featured on the show!

(* I experimented with pulling the white balance back, but with it dragged too far the lights in the foreground looked wrong, the greens looked weird, and the balcony looked unrealistic. Dragging it back just a little left the whole image looking a bit drab. So, I decided to leave the orange cast pretty much as it was.)

My posts are getting a little out of order because I have been lazy about processing my photos and uploading them to various places. I’ve been back to Galloway since I started this blog, and I recently returned from Amsterdam. In fact, I even have a hard drive full of photos from Spain, last Christmas, that I have not fully processed! Posts about those trips will come, eventually.

This post, however, is another star-trails image. This time taken last night (Sunday, 8th November, 2011) at a place called Rivington Pike, near Horwich, Lancashire.

The weather forecast had predicted a clear night, so I headed out with my camera gear, a headtorch, the book I was reading, and five layers of thermal clothing. The drive up the hill got a little scary — the road/track really wasn’t suitable for a regular car. At one point, I had to reverse back up a very narrow dirt track part when I realised I was approaching a step I would never get up. Instead, I had to brave the rougher, bumpy and rocky track. I parked-up and took the short but steep ascent to the tower at the top of the hill.

I checked out a couple of angles before settling on the one above. I wanted to get some of the urban light from below. Moonlight was going to be too much of a problem in my first chosen angle back towards Bolton and Manchester, so I chose a view further out west.

About halfway through the exposure, I heard some approaching vehicles and then saw them on the track below, in the distance. As they approached and the track disappeared from view below the hill, I put down my book and I walked out a little to see if I could see them. Imagine my surprise when a set of headlights crested the brow and came right at me! The group weren’t expecting anyone else up here, and I wasn’t expecting any visitors — especially Range Rovers! As a result of the cars’ lights, I had some glare and background impressions that I had to mask out of the final image, but the illumination of some of the foreground was quite nice so I left it in.

Anyway, here are some more details about the image:

• Lens: Sigma 10-20mm EX DC HSM f/4-5.6 @ 11mm
• Exposure: 117.5 mins (235 x 30s, stacked)
• Aperture: f/8
• ISO: 400
• Light: Starlight. Moonlight. Range Rover headlights. Tower painted by a few blasts of a Canon 580EXII at 1/16 power.
• Stacked in StarStaX for Mac

I recently got the opportunity to try my hand at making a startrail image, something I had wanted to try for a while. The result is the above image. One of the main problems faced when attempting any kind of long-exposure photography at night is light pollution. With all the light sources in towns and cities, the sky takes on a familiar orange glow. I figured that balancing the light pollution with the stars could be tricky, at least when trying to get lots of stars, including the dimmer ones, in the picture.

When I read the news that Galloway Forest Park had become the UK’s first Dark Skies Park I decided that it would be a great place to go to try this technique. The Dark Skies status means that, within the park, there is very little light pollution from surrounding light sources, resulting in near total darkness — perfect conditions for star-gazing.

Several months passed, and I had not yet planned a trip. Then, one night, in the pub, a friend and I decided to go wild camping. We were in Galloway for three nights but only the second night of the trip provided the clear skies necessary for star trails. I was chuffed to bits that it happened on the night we were camping at a location called “Fore Starr” — a ruined old building.

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