Dunnideer Castle thing with star trails

[birdbonkers84]

1. 56 x 30s
Dunnideer Castle Ruin Star Trails by Mark Coull, on Flickr

2. 109 x 30s
Dunnideer 109 by Mark Coull, on Flickr

On Saturday night me and a friend climbed the Dunnider hill (near Insch) to shoot some star trails with the ruins of the castle thing. It was around -7, our drinks bottles had frozen and my friends bag had started to frost over lol, but it was worth the experience. So many stars and there was even a bit of the milky way on show.

We are set up and left our camera to shoot away, must of been around 50 odd shots through our set 110, when 2 young members of the public came clambering up the hill with their big ass torch... we asked them politely to shine it away from the structure we were photographing which they did. Unfortunately they then proceeded to climb all over the ruins in front of our cameras...

So the first image is what I could salvage as their antics ruined 9 shots and due to them being spread out I pretty much had to drop half my shots. The second image Is me making the effort to fix the 9 shots in PS roughly so I could use all 109 (including 1 light painted shot). The PS work is rough and although I'm not exactly thrilled, it will do.

 

[TCampbell]

This is obviously fake because I am assured there are no non-cloudy days in Scotland.

Great photo! Sorry to read much of it was ruined but it looks like you still managed to get some good results!

BTW, there's a free program called StarStax which is used to let you do some creative combinations of star-trail photography (and it can do things like fix gaps, fade the trails, etc.)

 

[birdbonkers84]

This is obviously fake because I am assured there are no non-cloudy days in Scotland.

Great photo! Sorry to read much of it was ruined but it looks like you still managed to get some good results!

BTW, there's a free program called StarStax which is used to let you do some creative combinations of star-trail photography (and it can do things like fix gaps, fade the trails, etc.)

Thanks for the comment,

Funnily enough I did use StarStax, but I didn't know it could fix gaps? I'll definitely need to look into that! Thanks for the heaps up

 

[Designer]

..2 young members of the public came clambering up the hill with their big ass torch...

I might have asked to borrow their big-ass torch to do my light painting.

That's one thing I have on my "to do" list: Purchase a big-ass torch and do some light painting.