02/21/2013 Featured Arkansas Photography–Night skies over Twin Rivers Park

Night skies over the bridge at Twin Rivers Park

Taken with a Nikon D800e, 14-24 lens@ 17mm, F4.5, iso 400.  Image is the result of a series of 35 second frames that were stacked together. Well, it’s been a while since I put up anything new, and I do have my reasons, but I am going to try and get a bit more current.  This shot was taken over the new bridge at Twin Rivers Park, in Little Rock.  This is a new subject for me but one I have wanted to explore for a while now.  The bridge has a series of bright lights that run along it’s course so it added an additional challenge for any type of shooting.  If you exposed the bridge for 35 seconds, it would be totally over exposed, but I need the 35 seconds for the stars.  So the solution is to expose a series for the bridge after the stack is done, then combine the images together later.  The bridge added one other problem in that it had a much brighter center that would go off like a search light every once and while.  You can still the effect in the center of the image, but I felt it was balanced enough as I had it.   The effect of the center light is a bit harsher in the smaller jpg file I have uploaded for the web.   I was blessed to be shooting with Dr. Smith that night and only to have a few planes overhead.