“the Stars Over the Pier”

Recently I took a trip to the Emerald Isle in North Carolina and it gave me a great opportunity to photograph the ocean at different times. I’ve always loved shooting at sunrise and at sunset but from where I was staying sunset pictures just didn’t make for good pictures. Sunrise, on the other hand, had some great potential and I even got out one morning to see what I could capture. But what excited me the most was trying to get out late at night to see if I could capture some stars out over the ocean.

I’ve been to oceans plenty of times in my life and I’m a huge fan of piers. Where I was staying there was a pretty cool pier a short walk from my vacation home so I made a point of checking it out. When I saw how it was lit up at night I knew I found the anchor to my night time shots.

If there’s one huge advantage to shooting at night it’s the long exposure times you need to use for capturing an image. With shutter speeds approaching 30 seconds the power of the ocean starts to smooth out big time, giving water a silky look. The overall feel of a super long exposure shot is very dream like and it’s a style I really like.

The night before I captured my stars shot I went out to get some test shots with my Sony A5000. Here’s a quick “behind the camera” look at how I was set up:

For my featured shot of the week I went out the following night (when there were fewer clouds in the sky) and used a shutter speed of 25 seconds to prevent star trails (that was the longest I could go with my 16mm lens). All the other camera settings were based on achieving the shutter speed I wanted.

Overall I had a great time out shooting the stars, the ocean and the pier.

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